This was really compelling! Great characterization, and it leaves me wanting more.
There were a few places where the prose tripped me up, and I had to go back and reread a few times to understand what was meant. But they were few, and nothing a bit of extra time couldn't have solved!
Lovely prose, over all. I really liked the bit at the village, where Nepenthe "invited them all in". It was an unexpected-but-inevitable moment, turning an invitation into the village on its head. Well done!
No trouble at all! One part I recall specifically was toward the end, where the boy Tyrin comes out of the book to help. Nepenthe says to him, "There's no writing you back in, if you're destroyed like this." But then she proceeds to write him back him. My initial reading was "there's no writing you back in, if you are destroyed, like this (as you are currently destroyed)." It took me a minute to realize she meant that if he is destroyed while he is out of the book, he cannot be written back in.
The second paragraph gave me pause as well, where she goes to the destroyed village. I think I probably just read it too quickly, because when I read the last sentence ("Nepenthe invited them all in.") I did a double take because I imagined in my head, Nepenthe inviting them all *into the village*. But as I said in my review, I really, really like that last sentence; I think I just needed to slow down. :)
