This is what a modern fairytale should look like. It works very well, because one of the two protagonists is a physicist in over his head in an unknown land. There's plenty of seemingly arbitrary "fairytale logic" solutions to problems; but he's always there to act as a foil and ask the question - the reader is thinking: How on Earth does that make any sense?

Because of that, it reminded me of Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale. If you had to choose just one, read Winter's Tale - it was better and had beautiful prose as well.

But I don't want to disparage the Water Moon - it's a new fave and I can heartily recommend it.