Review: Gods of Jade and Shadow (DNF)

Title: Gods of Jade and Shadow

Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Genre: Historical Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Death of parent, physical abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, body horror (mild), injury (mild), death (mentions), sexual assault (attempted, brief), death of animals, gore, blood

Note: Trigger warnings in DNF books only cover the part I read. There may be triggers further in the book that I did not encounter.

Read To: 57%

Back Cover:

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.

Review:

I was originally going to do a Review Short for this one, but it turns out I have a whole review’s worth of thoughts after all. Mainly because I am just so disappointed in this book.

The concept is fantastic. I love stories of old gods who aren’t worshiped or believed in anymore who have to get help from mortals to stop the evil machinations of other old gods, and that’s essentially what this is. It’s also featuring Mayan gods and set in 1920s Mexico – a mythology and setting that I haven’t read much about (I don’t think I’ve ever read something set in 1920s Mexico, actually). The concepts are great and the plot is solid. It’s everything else that left much to be desired.

Mainly because there isn’t anything else. The people are cardboard cutouts bouncing along as the plot demands. The plot itself plods along, not exactly slow but never changing pace. There are no twists and no obstacles to give it texture, it never speeds up to drive tension, and it never slows down to leave room for character and setting. I spent over six hours with these characters, and the only things I know about them are things that were told to me by other characters or the narrator. (The narrator also looks down on Casiopea because she’s young, which was very irritating.) I spent six hours in 1920s Mexico, but all I know about it is “flappers, but it’s hot outside.” The plot seemed determined to force its way forward at the same pace regardless of anything else.

I loved the gods and how much the story shows of them, but they were still cardboard puppets forced along to the constant plodding of the plot. There were demons and ghosts and spirits and the Mayan underworld and fascinating ideas about the spacial limitations of deities, but I had to grasp for those interesting bits as the plot pushed me past. It glossed over all of the interesting parts that might have given it flavor – Mexican, Mayan, 1920s, mythological, or anything else – in favor of a relentlessly monotonous pace. Even with the threat of death for the protagonist and bad things for humanity if the antagonist won, I couldn’t bring myself to care.

I so wanted more from this. I wanted it to bring together 1920s Mexico and Mayan myth into something rich and magical and bursting with mood and atmosphere. I wanted a world I could sink my teeth into – and I think if I’d gotten that, I could have forgiven flat characters. I might have even been able to forgive a lackluster world if the characters were compelling and had personality and chemistry, even though the world was what I really wanted out of this story. But this book has neither, and the plot is far too straightforward to be interesting. As great as the ideas are and as much as I wanted to like this book, I just couldn’t find a reason to care.