Gods of Jade and Shadow

This one took me a while, eh? Gods of Jade & Shadow was a heavily anticipated book for me. But I'm bad at reading books with my hands and eyes these days (even though its my preferred method), my attention span is low and I'm perpetually restless. But there is also the fact that this book is not exactly a page turner.

Gods of Jade and Shadow follows Casiopeia Tun, a “lesser cousin” of a wealthy family who works on her grandfather's estate along with her mother, waiting on her grandfather hand and foot and constantly taking jabs and abuse from her spoiled, entitled cousin, Martin. One day, left alone on the estate, she finds herself with the key to a chest her grandfather keeps locked and secret, and decides to open it. She finds that bones of the god Hun-Kame, and is thrust onto a quest to restore Hun-Kame's rule over Xibalba and unseat his treacherous brother. Much of said quest though involves small adventures (before the big one, of course), allowing Casiopeia's small world to grow gradually, along with a love between her and he ancient god.

This is a hard one to rate because it is not for everyone. It wasn't even always for me. It moves slowly in a way that some may find tedious or without direction. I wasn't necessarily looking for a more action-packed story, but perhaps something that felt a little...fuller? The prose styling was inspired by old folk tales, so its more about telling than showing. And sometimes that's fine, more than fine, other times I found myself a little disappointed. The most lush and atmospheric part of the book was the final few chapters, which were my favorite and the most enjoyable and easiest to read, in my opinion. The rest felt like wandering around between brief quests.

There is also the matter of the romance. I am going through...some stuff right now and as such this might be fed considerably by my personal experience. But I just really was not in the mood for the “spunky girl and the stoic, mysterious man” trope. Their love story is a love story because they say it is. I...throws up hands and mumbles about something not understanding heterosexuality

I liked the concept here a lot. I liked the characters, mostly. Moreno-Garcia was handling some of her favorite character tropes - the angry rich boy is a much loved one of hers. I loved the ending, and overall I thought this was....nice.