At two separate points I was ready to give up on Michael Cisco's Celebrant. And boy howdy I'm glad I didn't. I still don't know what it's about, but at least now I know it's about something. I am beginning to think that it might be best to start the book at the end and read it backwards, chapter by chapter.

Something clicked about 1/2 through, and I am now loving at a book that, up until that point, I was merely interested in.

Cisco continues to be the most challenging author I've ever read. Each book gets progressively more challenging. He began with The Divinity Student, a simple and yet incredibly elegant and creative, plot-based story; and he has arrived where he is now, creating these elaborate puzzle-books overflowing with the most lush and beautiful prose I've ever read, with each page being a well of secrets that must be studied, parsed, and broken down.

For instance, all throughout Celebrant the dialog is written like this:

I'm going over here (he says).
OK, I will meet you there (she says).

However, for two pages in the middle, the main character meets a woman, and all of her dialog is written with traditional "" marks and structure. Although the responses from the main character are still noted as above.

That means something to the story. I know from the timeline at the beginning of the book that the woman in question is actually a person that the main character is going to be reincarnated as in the future (or the past, because time runs backwards in this book), but why does Cisco employ this affected style choice?

And book is full of these kinds of things. Almost every chapter contains something like this. Sometimes I'll spend ~5 minutes reading and re-reading the same page.