Status Updates From The Chosen (The Stone Dance...

If you do not count the fighting this book is the closest I can think of in terms of weirdness, aesthetics, architecture, bizarre hierarchy, etiquette and dialogues to the Elden Ring. It is perfect If you want to live in such a world and not fight his denizens

Perversely enough I've liked this a little less once the plot started plotting and also he found his boyfriend. It's lost that Moreau-painting static quality.
Found on the internet: 'Moreau was an advocate of two linked principles: the Beauty of Inertia and the Necessity of Richness.' Other than Flaubert's Salammbo, I never met a novel that more captured this. I swear it should be from the 1890s, not the 1990s.

The main character is the aesthetic. It's like a Gustave Moreau painting. So curious what the author's influences were.

I can see why he edited this down for the second edition -- this first is 640 pp in the paperback -- but it's written with such originality and good prose that its detail has not tired me. I'm hoping to like the series enough to read the second editions in future.

reading the old version although the second editions (2020) have such gorgeous covers. Promising so far, reminds of Moorcock.