I’ve always adored fairy tales and folklore and that love has carried on to my adulthood. So this tale was one I wanted to read for sure. Our heroine, a young woman named Casiopea Tun who may have been born under an unlucky star for all she knows, is wasting her youth away in her grandfather’s house. Doing laundry, cleaning floors and overall being treated like a servant without much regard. She’s a survivor with a quiet fire within her that refuses to be extinguished as day in and day out she endures cruel words and a beating here and there. She doesn’t fancy herself as a Cinderella type but dreams of life– of being able to true start living her life free from her grandfather’s house – that doesn’t feel like a home despite his wealth – and out of the dusty, little southern Mexico town.

The Jazz Age is in full swing, and Casiopea wants freedom, to drive a shiny automobile, to go dancing, to travel, to wear pretty things, hell to be able to have a day off. She’s been living in the suffocating presence of those she calls her kinfolk for way too long. Even the relative closest in age to her, her cousin Martin, is a horrid excuse of a human being who thoroughly enjoys his status of being the next (undeserving) head of the family. Martin reminds her of their respective stations every day. Her life takes a huge turn when, as a punishment, she’s left home. She’s left behind as her family leaves on a day trip. Casiopea snoops around in the bedroom of her ornery grandfather to find that he’s left his most prized possession behind: a mysterious wooden box with intricate Mayan artwork and a key he rarely takes off. In opening this chest, she sets herself on a journey where she’ll see sights brighter than many a star and end up changing her own destiny: she accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan God of Death, who requests her help in recovering his throne after being betrayed by his brother.

The Mayan God of Death, whom we learn is “Prince of the Starless Night, Firstborn of Xibalba,” gives Casiopea the name of Hun-Kame’ to refer to him by and is an imposing force. Both girl and God are linked, their destinies tied together as their lives depend on each other to make the trip. Casiopea, named after a constellation by her kind hearted, poetry-loving, dead father, is doomed if they fail, and if she succeeds she is promised her heart’s content. Unbeknownst to her, if they fail, the God braced in the flesh will face a different kind of fate. It is a different type of death, yet one that is far more ideal than her end. It is absolutely fascinating to see these two on the pages, traveling together, experiencing the cities together and meeting all the supernatural bumps in the night together. It’s a visual hourglass of The God becoming more and more human and the girl losing more and more of her life force and what makes her, her.

With each page that brought me closer to the end, I mourned. Yet I wouldn’t dare stop reading and be left wondering who made it to the Black throne and whose life was forfeit. I wouldn’t mind taking another trip, being on another ship with this book close to my heart. I wouldn’t mind re-reading this odyssey that had everything from the bright lights of Mexico City to the darkness of the Mayan underworld. I wouldn’t mind being rocked to sleep by waves big and deep again, with my eyes too heavy to continue reading of the young woman who dared to live and who dared to not give the God of the Underworld his new heart’s desire.

Read the rest of my review here: https://blacknerdproblems.com/gods-of-jade-and-shadow-representation-self-confidence-and-bravery-in-the-arms-of-mayan-folklore/