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Publication date – July 23, 2019
Summary: 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.
Thoughts: I want to state right away that nothing I can say here will do this book justice. Reading this book make me bitterly regret that I couldn’t read it faster, because the story was so good and so compelling, while at the same time lamenting that I couldn’t go any slower, to make it last. This isn’t the first time I’ve had that thought process while reading one of Moreno-Garcia’s books, and I doubt it will be the last.
Gods of Jade and Shadow tells the story of Casiopea, a young woman working for extended family who, to be blunt, treat her pretty damn poorly. She wants more in her life than drudge work, dreaming of the day she can move to a bigger city and start a new life, a life that’s really hers. Her adventures in the wider world get unexpectedly kickstarted, however, when she accidentally frees the god Hun-Kame, whom Casiopea’s grandfather had trapped in a wooden box. Hun-Kame seeks Casiopea’s assistance to return him to his rightful place, ruling the Underworld, but this means finding his missing body parts to restore his power, as well as overthrowing his brother, Vucub-Kame, who now sits on the throne. The whole story is set against the backdrop of Mexico during the 1920s, setting it firmly as historical fantasy.
I’ll be honest here: the place and time period aren’t ones I know very much about, so I can’t comment on any artistic liberties or anything of the sort. As for the mythology… Well, I knew how to pronounce Xibalba before I opened this book, but that’s about as much as I can claim. My lack of familiarity with a lot of the cultural and historical elements, though, worked rather well for me, as now I feel compelled to end some of my ignorance by learning more. This is one of the things I love the most about reading novels set in this world but in places or times I’m less familiar with. If I enjoy the book, I’m usually inspired to learn more, to familiarize myself so that I’m less ignorant in the future, and so that I can better appreciate more media with similar elements.
I have a weakness for stories in which deities interact with mere mortals, and Gods of Jade and Shadow definitely delivered on that count. I expected a bit of amusement when it came to Hun-Kame trying to deal with the mundane world, but there was actually very little of that, sticking with a more serious tone throughout the story rather than taking a “fishgod-out-of-water” approach. There are some clashes between him and Casiopea, most of them due to Casiopea’s quick temper and her wants and needs, which were sometimes opposed to what Hun-Kame wanted or needed. While Hun-Kame’s status as a deity was in question through the story, it never really became a focal point for humour, which, honestly, was kind of impressive. I like that sort of take and expected some of it because it’s easy territory to play in, but that clearly wasn’t the story that Moreno-Garcia wanted to tell.
As I said earlier, there’s nothing I can say here that would do this book justice. It’s a fantastic novel, it’s a brilliant story set in a fascinating time and place, with a compelling story and flawed but interesting characters moving everything along. Even when you dislike characters, you want to know more about them, find out their motivations and goals. They all have a place within the plot, but none of them existed only to move the plot along. They all had their own lives, their own development, all of them felt fleshed out and real. There are themes of sacrifice and devotion, of duty and independence, of selfishness and taking risks and love of all kinds, and it’s just such a wonderful damn book that I can very highly recommend it to pretty much everyone who reads my blog. If your tastes are even a bit close to mine when it comes to SFF novels, you’ll find yourself very satisfied by what you find inside the pages of Gods of Jade and Shadow. Don’t miss out on it.
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