Books I've read recently

Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente

In the form of a venereal disease, the entrance to a malleable city of dreams slowly spreads throughout the world like a nightmare of Lovecraft's. Anyone it touches, it brings to depravity through their new craving for Palimpsest; a gift exchanged for an obsession.
Watch our heroes try to ascend even as their lives, and their very bodies, shatter.

There is a list of things that are of Palimpsest: seclusion among many, vivid prose (+⭐), fantastical cityscapes (+⭐), theatrical gestures, off-putting obscenities (-⭐), rings of bees, domains of November, unnecessary accents, a heart of ice.