While I was vastly looking forward to this story from C.J. Merwild's art, it does, alas, suffer in the translation. As someone fluent in both French and English, I can see how the translator was at times too literal, leaving the English a bit garbled (but clear enough that I can imagine exactly what the original French term used was.)

This is also definitely NOT a YA book, for those who might be wondering. There's a fair number of content warnings - gore, sexual content (consensual and non-), etc., as other reviewers have noted. I made it most of the way though, but a personal intolerance for the graphic nature of the content eventually made me quit before the end. There is sadness. :( (Especially as this edition from Faecrate is /gorgeous/...)