Book 2 of my 26 books for 2024 goal! Still roughly on track, though I want to pick up the pace.

One reason I like book blogging is that I pay more attention to things like book introductions and that often leads me to more interesting reads! Last year, when I read Orrin Grey’s excellent collection How to See Ghosts and Other Figments, I noted the lovely introduction by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a Mexico-born Canadian novelist. I am always looking for new and interesting authors to read, and so I picked up her 2019 novel Gods of Jade and Shadow, whose premise immediately intrigued me.

This novel is a modern fairy tale, set in the Jazz Age in Mexico, and features a young girl who gets drawn into a power struggle between two Mayan Gods of Death!

Casiopea Tun is a young woman stuck in an unhappy life. Her father died several years earlier, forcing her and her mother to move back into her grandfather’s home, where she is treated as no more than a servant by her other family members, including her cruel cousin Martin. Casiopea dreams of a life outside of the small town of Uukumil, but it seems that she will never have the opportunity or the resources to leave — and besides her mother, nobody is sympathetic to her misery.

Then one day, when she has been left at home as punishment while the rest of the family goes on an outing, she opens a curiously-carved wooden box that her grandfather has guarded, and releases the Mayan God of Death Hun-Kame, who was imprisoned there through the treachery of his brother, Vucub-Kame. Casiopea finds her life inadvertently linked to that of Hun-Kame, and the two of them must journey across Mexico to reclaim the pieces of the god that were stolen to make him whole… or Casiopea will be drained of all her life and find herself walking Xibalba, the land of the dead. As they travel, however, both become weaker — Casiopea losing her life force to Hun-Kame and the god becoming more human — and they may not have the strength to win out over the deceitful and merciless Vucub-Kame, who has made plans of his own.

Gods of Jade and Shadow is a fast-paced, charming and dark fairy tale. Its opening will bring to mind the story of Cinderella, but the encounters of Casiopea and Hun-Kame with various supernatural beings is quite far from that classic tale and draws wonderfully from Mayan folklore and religion. I curiously felt that some of the earlier chapters were a little slow to me, but by the end of the book I was riveted and keen to learn the ultimate fate of all the characters, and whether even a god can change.

It is overall a wonderful novel, and clearly I am not alone in thinking that: I coincidentally happened to read this list of “30 of the best fantasy novels of all time” while I was reading the book, and was happy to see Moreno-Garcia’s book on it!