Gods Of Jade And Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Casiopeia Tun has an unenviable life.  Taken in by her mother's wealthy family after the death of her father her mother and her are treated like servants rather than family.  As you would expect this doesn't quash her spirit, it just makes her dream of the day she can escape her controlling family and get away to the city where Jazz Babies with their flashing ankles and shingled hair dance to fast music, swim in the ocean and drive automobiles.  When her grandfather punishes her by making her stay home instead of joining the monthly pilgrimage to the Cenotes she lets her inquisitive nature take hold and opens the mysterious traditional Mayan decorated trunk in his room.  Like Pandora before her this brings disaster upon her and her family.  Rather than releasing the ills of the world it releases Hun-Kame, an ancient God who was imprisoned by his twin brother Vucub-Kame with the assistance of her grandfather.  Cue a race across Mexico to retrieve Hun-Kame's missing ear, finger, jade necklace and eye and an ultimate showdown on the Black Road of Xibalba between the brothers and also Casiopeia and her cousin Martin Leyva.

Unfortunately, for me the telling was all a little pedestrian and I found it very difficult to really care about any of the characters within it.  There is an attempt at characterisation but I never really got a sense of any of the protagonists as anything more than ciphers on a page.  The exception to this was Martin Leyva, despite his obvious flaws he was the only one that really came across as a person beyond the page.  This was quite a surprise as the majority of the book is told from Casiopeia's point of view and we only hear from Martin a handful of times.  It seems that these were enough to give the impression of a boy floundering in to manhood and struggling to find his place both within the familt hierarchy and the larger world.

The mythology that forms the basis of the book is well described and I did find it quite informative about Mayan beliefs.  It only really deals with the Lords of Death and their realm of Xibalba but it was well explained whilst treading the fine line between treating the reader like an idiot or assuming they already knew these creation tales.  I did find it quite startling how similar to other belief systems these tales and locations where as I knew very little about Mayan civilization (apart from ritual human sacrifice).

The story itself is more of a romance mixed with a coming of age for a young woman of impecunious means.  Not really what I was expecting from the blurb.  Overall this was just an okay read.

THIS IS AN HONEST REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK RECEIVED FROM THE PUBLISHER.