A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

I can pinpoint to the sentence where I stop considering Tanith Lee's Black Unicorn perfect. Before that point it is perfect in every way. Unfortunately, there are two and a half further books. The beginning, with the protagonist growing up in her witch mother's strange fortress with her literal pet peeve, and finding the black unicorn's bones in the sand and piecing them together, is comforting and eldritch and homey and numinous all at once. Then, unfortunately, in following the unicorn, she leaves the desert behind and starts interacting with other people, and I no longer care.