What an outstanding exploration of the Prester John myth. I think Valente did the world-building exquisitely--flavors of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities in it, especially in the road to the Fountain and the mist city where they talk to Knyz--and properly expands the hinted wonders of that world in such a glorious, magical way. The frame narrative, with its rotting books leaving holes in the primary stories, also worked beautifully to accustom me to the idea that the whole of the Prester John story is unknowable. I'm not entirely sure I want to read the second one, because what I know now has very clear bones: John becomes the king of Pentexore, tries to remake it into the Christian paradise that the letter to the West made it out to be, and somehow that brings disaster--or at least decline. I wonder whether the woman who tends the book trees, who rubs uneasily at her neck, is in fact Hagia, who has somehow grown a new head. She very well could be--that would be a wonderful resonance with poor Imtithal who wants nothing more than to take on a new name and be loved (or known) for who she is as Hajji, rather than who she was as Imtithal the story-teller. But in a way I don't care: The whole point of the book is that there are these glorious tales about this glorious world, and now it's gone because a fucking Christian missionary stumbled in and ruined everything, and I don't really want to see how that happens in the second book. I'd rather leave that part in the lacunae of the story.