"Gods of Jade and Shadow" Discuss Everything *Spoilers*

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

We're trying something new and opening this up earlier!

So, what did you think?

A few questions in case you're stuck:

1. What did you think of the plot?
2. What fairy tales did it remind you of?
3. What did you think of the setting and mythology?
4. Was it what you were expecting?

[Gabi]

I'll make it short and painless:

Ad 4.) No, it was unfortunately not what I was expecting. I had a distinct "Bone Witch" vibe. The style was way too simple for my usual taste.

A classic case of 'I'm the wrong audience'. That's why I gave it 3 stars, cause I think it is a decent book for the right audience.

[Shomeret]

I confess that I didn't even like this book very much for most of it, but I wanted to like it because it was potentially my sort of book. So I stuck with it and Casiopea Tun rewarded my persistence by becoming the sort of protagonist that I love.

I can see that other readers got a Cinderella vibe, but Casiopea ended up accomplishing a good deal more than marrying a prince. There was no romance HEA.

Plus I there was an approach to theology which I considered the reverse of American Gods. Instead of the idea that Gods can come to another country and gain power, Moreno-Garcia's contention is that if Gods leave their place of origin they become weaker. That gave me something to think about.

[Cathy]

I liked the book. It made me think that this was an analogy of life. Death walks with you through out your life and the longer you walk together the older or less life you have. Just cause you die, doesnt mean you die for good. Doctors and others can bring you back to life, and after, you may not know what you want to do with your life but you know you dont want to go back to what it was.

This was that kind of story to me.

[Anat]

I was hyped up for mythology and gods roaming free, however I was disappointed by how flat and boring the characters were.
Not sure what was more annoying for me the protagonist or the writing style - there was a lot of times the narrator is telling instead of showing; the girl being portrayed as poor, miserable girl, horribly abused by everyone (not as bad as a servant, but almost as bad and hey at least the servant girls get to fool around with the boys), but she was KIND and GOOD so she said this and that instead of what she wanted to say. And she's not violent of course so she only beat her cousin up that one time that made him bleed and the rest of the time she's praying for God to get rid of him for her. Anyway, I could not connect to her or any of the other characters at all.
There were some interesting aspects from the mythology side about Xibalba and the gods, but it was barely explored imo.
They just went from one place to the other to pick up body parts with hardly any trouble or danger. Predictably falling in love. Heck, pretty much everything was predictable including or perhaps especially the ending.
Whew I am sorry for the rant. I'm mostly disappointed than anything else.

[Gabi]

You express exactly how I felt, Anat.

[Amanda]

I felt the same way about the characters, very flat and felt almost like a paint-by-numbers version of character development. Casiopea barely changes throughout the novel and what growth there is consists of "She used to think/was always told X, but actually Y."

It really left me disappointed and somewhat annoyed, because there really was a lot to like about it, I very much enjoyed the mythology, and the descriptions of Xibalba, but there was just so much that left me shaking my head and thinking "Why?"

[Hank, Hankenstein's Modster]

Probably this is opening a can of worms but along the lines of what Gabi said, I was definitely the wrong audience because it is a YA book. I am flabergasted as to why the author is so firm in denying that she writes YA. It seems like if the book gets marketed correctly, people like me don't pick it up and trash it for not living up to its promise. It satisfies every YA criterea I have come across.

A good story for YA but a very unfulfilling, simplistic, flat, non-YA book.

(I just went through several ways to describe an Adult book and all of them have added undesirable connotations, Adult, mature audience book, literature, not kids, regular book?)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I get simplistic, but I don't get YA. I would not give this book to a 12 year old as the epitome of something I thought to be valuable to them in some way. I do think this author's style is sort of surface level, which makes it light in general, though, so I agree with that take.

I'll save my rant about the uselessness of the term ya for a later date, because I don't disagree that this is quite straight forward. It mimics fairy tales and legends. I think the author was going for a twist on the "and they lived happily ever" sort of vibe, but I don't think she invested enough to be fully successful.

I liked the mythology and the parts about Xibalba though. I wanted more of that, and I loved the glimpses of society. I really like the 1920s as a time period for fiction because there was so much going on, you can really focus on so much more than Prohibition and flappers.

[Anat]

I also found it YA in the style and the immaturity(?) of the protagonist, except it didn't feel like she evolved or grew out of it.
Personally, I have nothing against the YA genre and I have some favorites that are YA; sometimes there are very compelling characters despite an unsophisticated story and vice versa (I guess that's true to any genre). Unfortunately this lackluster story (with a ton of potential) had nothing to back it up or at least balance it.

[Bruce]

To me this wasn't YA, although I can certainly see that angle. It had the Cinderella feel to it and the characters were in the right age group, but I felt the author was trying more to explore the mythology than make a YA story.

I thought it was a fun story to read, although it got kind of predictable in the middle. The ending picked up again. And I always enjoy a good Cinderella-type story. The mythology was fun also, and probably would have been better if I was more familiar with the myths.

However, I felt the author struggled with making distinct characters. They all spoke with the same voice and had similar worldviews. Although there was some fun conflict, there wasn't a lot of change either.

Did anybody else think it was weird that Hun-Kame is considered so beautiful yet he is missing all these body parts like ears and eyes? How does that work? If I saw someone missing body parts I'm not sure I would describe them as incredibly handsome.

[Ryan]

Here is the part of the book where that is addressed:
===
“From me he took my left eye, ear, and index finger, as well as my jade necklace.”

As he spoke and raised his hand, she realized he was indeed missing the body parts he had mentioned. His appearance was so striking one could not notice the absence at first. Only when it was highlighted did it become obvious.
===

I suspect there must be some magic going on here as well. We know Hun-Kame can create illusions; there may well be some passive illusions going on to mask his physical oddities.

[Oleksandr]

I have to admit that I'm in the camp of people, who found the story rather flat and generic. Magic creatures and wizards would be at home in Greek as easily as in the Mayan setting if they had other names (even twins duality - think of Hercules and his brother). The final quest was interesting with some not completely expected twists but overall I haven’t learnt much neither about Mexico nor about Mayan mythology from the novel, which are my primary interests in reading non-Eurocentric fantasy. The Lord of Death is too "price Charming" in his manners and attitudes - recall this is a deity used to quite gory human sacrifices! Her cousin is too flat, as if only on such an unfavorable background the protagonist can shine.

The book also falls into mine definition what YA is like, even if the author insists otherwise.

I see that the simplicity can be a conscious choice to make it fairy-tale-like but it hasn't sounded that way to me, quite possibly because I haven't read a lot of tales in English, so I freely admit that the fall can be with me.

[Bruce]

Ryan wrote: "Here is the part of the book where that is addressed:
===
“From me he took my left eye, ear, and index finger, as well as my jade necklace.”

As he spoke and raised his hand, she realized he was i..."

Thanks for that. I guess that makes sense since the striking appearance would probably be an illusion in the first place.

[JenJeninmyJenJen]

1. Personally, I think that the plot was quite delectable. Like when that whole thing with the box happened, I was all like WHOOP, there about to be some voodoo magic up in here. Also, I relate to the death god because I don't like my brother either. Like this one time, I walked past my brother in the kitchen and he was eating soup with a fork. I was all like why are you eating soup with a fork and he told me that when he looked at a spoon he saw his reflection and that scared him. Anyway, the plot was so cool.

2. Pesonaly, the story reminded me a lot of princess and the pea. This is because her name is CasioPEA.

3. I really liked the mexican mythology part. This is because my profile picture is a picture of a taco. Tacos are a mexican delicacy.

4. Honestly, the book was NOT what I was expecting at all. On the cover it was night-time. But in the book, It was day-time.

This is JenJen signing off

[JenJeninmyJenJen]

Guys I really want a comment

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I am glad you found so much to like in this book, JenJen! Thanks for adding those thoughts!

[JenJeninmyJenJen]

Thanks girl!!!!!

[JJMill]

Book reminded of The Princess Bride magical and fun. Didn't think it was ya but not sure if people would say books like Princess Bride or Neverwhere are ya now.

[Melani]

I finished and it was... fine. I don't think the book lived up to the promise though. I mean, the 20s were a decade of indulgence and hedonism and social change because the world was recovering from the punch of WWI followed so closely by the Spanish Flu. People were celebrating that they were alive, and I didn't really get that from this book at all. Most of the references to the 20s felt tacked on, or egregiously misunderstood. The scene where Cassiopeia bobs her hair is probably the best example of this. She doesn't bob her hair as a sign of independence, or as a rejection of the conservative culture she grew up in, she does it because she's forced to by Hun-Kame.

I was reminded a lot of Katherine Arden's Winternight Trilogy. The tale of two death gods, brothers, fighting each other and the woman that one of them becomes human enough to fall in love with. I do think Arden captured the feel of the place and era she was writing better then Moreno-Garcia did though.

[Kaa]

I finished this last night, and it was a really enjoyable read for me. I loved the folk tale/fairy tale feel of it, especially after reading several chapters out loud. I agree with others that a lot of it was pretty predictable, but I really needed some comfort reading this week, and this book was exactly right. The romantic elements actually worked extremely well for me - the development of feelings between Casiopeia and Hun-Kame felt realistic for the characters and situation, without being excessively melodramatic. And I really liked that they didn't end up together.

I do wish the setting had been explored in a bit more depth, but I actually thought it was well depicted. I admit, I had some familiarity with Mexican history in this period but did some googling as well to understand some of the background, which I think helped me to enjoy the book more. In the 1920s, Mexico was emerging from decades of dictatorship followed by another decade of civil war, so this was a time of a lot of change and readjustment and uncertainty, and I could feel some of that in the backdrop to the story. The civil war and the following period was marked by a lot of struggle between elites and workers/peasants (this is the Pancho Villa/Zapata era), and there was also (as mentioned in the book) a lot of conflict between the government and the Catholic Church, as well as movement on women's rights. I thought some of the parallels between the story and the politics of the time in Mexico were intriguing, although probably not very apparent or accessible to readers not familiar with Mexican history.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Thanks for sharing some of your insight, and I'm glad this gave you the break you needed, Kaa!

The setting and fairytale tone worked well for me, I would have loved a bit more of the background you're hinting at.

[~ Giulia ~]

Oleksandr wrote: "The Lord of Death is too "price Charming" in his manners and attitudes - recall this is a deity used to quite gory human sacrifices!"

I felt the same way.

This is just my impression, so maybe it's completely wrong XD
The way I saw it is that as the time passed he didn't just become more human; because of their connection he became more and more like Casiopea's idea of him. Just like the gods and Xibalba first took the form their believers imagined, so now he's being shaped by Casiopea or something like that. Which is one of the reasons I would have never accepted an ending where they ended up together.

[Oleksandr]

~ Giulia ~ wrote: "he became more and more like Casiopea's idea of him."

I agree with this interpretation

[E.D.]

A pleasant strolling quest to recover a god’s throne. I found this an easy and relaxing read but a bit single paced. However, the use of Mayan mythology added to the era of the nineteen twenties and the ‘hero’ being a death god did put a different spin on the story, plus I must say that the ending stopped it from spilling into sentimentality or over romance. I would have expected to find the scenario more frightening, given the characters involved.

[Aga]

I have mixed feelings about this book. I enjoyed reading some parts like Black Road contest but the plot in the middle bored me. I'm happy I gave this book a chance but at the same time, I won't be thinking about it or consider reread.

[Tim]

When Cassiopeia was racing Martin down the black road I thought, "technically, couldn't she sacrifice herself and go straight to the castle?"

Overall it was a pretty good book. And I actually think Martin was the character who grew the most, somehow. Maybe it's just me.

[Bonnie]

through Chapter 14 / 41%

My interest in this story is mild. Very mild. So mild it is almost diaphanous.

[Michelle]

Bonnie wrote: "through Chapter 14 / 41%

My interest in this story is mild. Very mild. So mild it is almost diaphanous."

Is it imaginary interest, maybe? LOL

[Bonnie]

Amanda wrote: "I felt the same way about the characters, very flat and felt almost like a paint-by-numbers version of character development. Casiopea barely changes throughout the novel ..."

That is exactly what I thought Amanda, Paint By Numbers. Perfunctory. I imagined doing a bit of research on Mayan myths, and then coloring that onto a sketched/outlined quest plot.