DNF Review – Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 347 pages
Publisher: Del Rey
Release Date: July 23, 2019
ASIN: B07KDX5NTF
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Bought for Kindle
Rating: 2/5 stars
“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.”
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I bought a copy of this book for my Kindle.
Thoughts: I ended up setting this aside at 50%, I just had absolutely no interest in the characters or the story here. The story seemed a bit repetitive and the characters very shallow. I really enjoyed Moreno-Garcia’s “Mexican Gothic”. However, I have also read “Certain Dark Things” and “Velvet was the Night” and I didn’t like either of those books. I think I can solidly say at this point that I am just not a fan of Moreno-Garcia’s writing style. It always seems a bit simple and forced to me.
The story here follows Casiopea as she tries to escape her slave-like existence at her grandfather’s house. She does so by accidentally releasing a Mayan god of death, Hun-Kame, who binds her to him and wants her to help find his missing body parts.
I love reading about different mythologies and was hoping to be drawn in by the mythology here. Unfortunately, the way the mythology was handled felt simple and sloppy and didn’t help to offset the shallow, boring characters. The story was repetitive, basically Casiopea and Hun-Kamé (the god) are just running around talking to people while trying to collect his parts. The characters felt very one dimensional; Casiopea kind of blindly follows Hun-Kamé around and Hun-Kamé is incredibly immature, like a little child.
I kept having to force myself to sit down and read this. I finally realized I had absolutely no desire to learn anything more about this story, this world or the characters here and decided to set it aside.
My Summary (2/5): Overall I found this to be a very disappointing read. The subject matter sounded intriguing but it was handled in a shallow and sloppy way. The characters were one-dimensional and hard to care about and the plot was repetitive. At the halfway point I was completely ambivalent about the story and having to force myself to sit down and read this…so, I decided it was time to put it down and move on. Aside from “Mexican Gothic” I really haven’t enjoyed any other Moreno-Garcia books I have read. So, I think it is time to stop picking up books from her. They always sound like books I might like but then the execution just isn’t there.
