'The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own.
Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather’s room. She opens it—and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother. Failure will mean Casiopea’s demise, but success could make her dreams come true.
In the company of the strangely alluring god and armed with her wits, Casiopea begins an adventure that will take her on a cross-country odyssey from the jungles of Yucatán to the bright lights of Mexico City—and deep into the darkness of the Mayan underworld.'
I have to be honest, I'd not read the blurb for Gods of Jade and Shadow before I started to read it. I'd been given a copy to read and thought the cover looked great so just picked it at random from my to be read pile. At first I thought that it might end up being the kind of book that I wouldn't usually enjoy, as the first few chapters were centred on Casiopea and her life in her grandfather's home. She is presented as a young woman that has become stuck into a poor situation thanks to events outside of her control. She's barely better than a servant to her family, just because of decisions her mother made in her youth.
These first few chapters play out like many 'normal' novels, where there's nothing that happens in the book that's outside the realms of everyday life. I thought this was going to be a story about a young woman breaking free of her family and finding her own place in the world. And it was, to be fair; except for she's doing it whilst on a road trip with an ancient god. The sudden introduction of Hun-Kame, the deposed lord of the underworld was a surprise twist that I honestly didn't see coming. But it was something that the book desperately needed.
The road trip that Casiopea and Hun-Kame go on, crossing Mexico and meeting various magic users, gods, and demons, plays out well, and doesn't rush in its pacing. The two lead characters get to spend a great deal of time together, and their relationship feels pretty real. It's nice to see Casiopea get to break free of the negative thoughts and feelings that her family have worked into her and become her own person, whilst seeing Hun-Kame gradually begin to become more human is fascinating and engaging.
The story of Casiopea itself, and her issues with her family are the weakest parts of the book, and the story only really seems to come to life when she's journeying with Hun-Kame in order to find the missing pieces of his body so that he can return to his former godhood. Whenever Casiopea's familial struggles took centre stage the book would lag, and because of this I found that I'd occasionally get bored with the narrative.
In contrast, the more that the author delved into this world of Mayan mythology and magic the more I was drawn in. The setting and the mythology of the book is one that I've not read before. I've seen stories use christian mythology a lot, and things like Norse and Egyptian mythology are pretty well known and well used in sci-fi and fantasy. Mayan mythology, on the other hand, felt new and exciting because it was something that I'd not seen used before. In some ways the book made me think of Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, which drew on other underutilised mythology and cultures as inspiration.
Gods of Jade and Shadow is a fun road-trip coming-of-age style story where a young woman gets to forge her own future. The mystical elements are definitely the draw though, and actually make her personal story feel all the more real. It's a shame the book ended the way it did, as I'd want to see more from these characters and this world, but don't get the impression that Silvia Moreno-Garcia will return to it. If she does, I'm definitely interested to see what would come next.
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