I'm actually 3/4 of the way through Tyll, but I put it down and I'm not sure when or if I'll finish it up. The story is based "on the folkloristic tales about Till Eulenspiegel, a jester that was the subject of a chapbook in 16th century Germany" (Wikipedia). The novel is well-written and I loved diving into a realm of folklore and history that I have hardly any exposure to. The story was dark but the writing was lucid and rich.

The challenge I had was that the sections of the novel (of which there were seven) were not temporal, each being it's own novella to a great degree--and you could certainly read each section independently and feel that you'd just read a fully encapsulated story without the need to continue, which is essentially what I did after the fifth section. The sections jump around in time and narrative voice, some focusing on the character of Tyll and others only seeming to have a tangental relationship with him. It may be that tying together a truly folkloric subject clashed too much with the way the novel was structured for me, where I was expecting a more traditional narrative. Part of me very much wanted to finish the story, as the writing was rich and fluid and the subject matter was fresh ground to me, but it lost me along the way.

I think someone who loves folklore and historical fiction will enjoy this book quite a bit, but they'll probably need to want more depth and complexity that a straight plot and traditional storytelling structure.