The Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia represents a welcome entry in the wave non-Western fantasy books. Those previously reviewed at Fiction Unbound include:
S.A. Chakraborty’s The City of Brass and The Kingdom of Copper set in the Middle East and Cairo at the time of Napoleon’s conquest
The Bird King, G. Willow Wilson’s novel set in Moorish Granada as it succumbs to a united Christian Spain
Ausma Zehanat Khan’s The Bloodprint set in the Taliban’s Afghanistan
The Poppy War and The Dragon Republic by R. F. Kuang set during Sino-Japanese Wars of the early 20th century.
These novels have several elements in common:
1) They take place during a time of cultural upheaval in thinly-disguised regions and eras, which enrich their geographic, religious, and historical backstory, making them a sort of alternate-reality with a fantasy element.
2) The protagonists are heroines who often have supernatural male or female allies.
3) Their love interests really wouldn’t work out for the best long-term, and the heroines are not crushed by this fact. They proudly carry on their quests and achieve their own goals and growth.
4) The traditional mythological gods, demons, and legendary heroes of the non-Western region or era play an important role in the story, often helping or hindering the heroine on her quest.
5) Most of the heroines are, or believe they are, poor and ill-equipped to handle their Quest when they receive the initial Call to Adventure—but being downtrodden, they are eager to escape their current situation and so do not resist the Call.
The Latest Offering of Non-Western Fantasy
Into this multicultural mix we welcome Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Gods of Jade and Shadow, a heroic journey / coming of age fantasy set in a time and setting unfamiliar to most modern Western literature-oriented fantasy readers: the Jazz Age of Mexico and the Maya underworld of Xibalba.
The story opens with our heroine, Casiopea Tun, in a Cinderella-like position, a poor relation forced to shine her old grandfather’s shoes, mend his clothes, and read him the newspaper. Her mother eloped with a poet with native-American blood and produced Casiopea, who looks embarrassingly “indian” to her more fair-skinned relatives. During the Jazz Age, Mexicans used bleach to lighten their skin and valued curls in their hair. Casiopea’s time working around and listening to the stories and myths of the household’s Mayan servants provides her clues what to do after she unlocks a trunk at the foot of her grandfather’s bed, accidentally releasing the gorgeous, stately, and chilly Mayan Lord of the Underworld, Hun Kamé.
Hun Kamé is grateful and treats her with more respect and formality than anyone ever has, but he is cold and remote, vengeful and unsympathetic to her concerns at first. He advises her that with his bone shard lodged in her hand, he must drain her energy and that they will both die if they do not quickly collect his body parts and jade necklace which his traitorous brother, Vucub Kamé, spread and hid across Mexico after he cut off Hun Kamé’s head.
Hun Kamé explains why he treats Casiopea with respect and calls her Lady:
“Courage is the greatest of virtues…You have been brave. I thought a mortal, faced with my abrupt appearance and an equally abrupt quest, would have broken into sobs and abject fear. You have not. There is merit in this, as it would have been very vexing to drag you around in such a state.”
This is one of Hun Kamé’s several “bizarre” but honest compliments Casiopea is not sure how to take, as they journey across Mexico overcoming external trials like famished ghosts, demons, and warlocks; and internal challenges like fear, increasing fatigue, guilt, and misunderstanding. Casiopea grows during her harrowing adventure. She must overcome her bitterness toward her grandfather and her arrogant and demanding cousin, Martín, and teach him how to act as charitably as her, and to forgive. Externally she must overcome her fear of walking the black roads of Xibalba, which try to confuse mortals and are littered with dangerous beasts, to save Hun Kamé and ensure his power-hungry brother Vucub Kamé never achieves his bloody vision for Mexico.
Part of Casiopea’s power comes from speech, mythmaking, and words. Hun Kamé cautions her that the words she speaks have power to make themselves come true. Casiopea compares her situation unfavorably to fairy tales she knows. Hers won’t have a happy ending, she suspects. She’ll live and be rejected by her family for running away with an unmarried man, or die.
Despite that she is a young, single woman living in a strict, conservative, Catholic country, Casiopea is unusually willing to go with Hun Kamé because she has enumerated her dreams: she wants to dance to jazz in a modern dress, drive an automobile, and swim in the ocean. When she confesses to him that she would enjoy doing these things with him, her wish seems to make him begin to wish it, too. As he takes more and more sustenance from his bond with her, she weakens physically and his godly aspect weakens; at times he almost forgets who he is or what he was.
Vessel depicting the court of Xibalba. Maya Late Classic, c. 600- 900 AD.
The Gods of Jade and Shadow is also about racial and sexual discrimination within Mexican culture, including the idea that Mayan women are less beautiful than European-looking women. Hun Kamé is the first person to point out to Casiopea that she is beautiful. “Haven’t you ever looked in the mirror?” he asks with his typical, chilly directness, genuinely mystified. As a woman in Mexico during that era, Casiopea also faces sexual discrimination, especially from her recurring nemesis, her cousin Martín, who cannot understand why she must continue to defy him and not defer to him as the future head of their household.
This book is beautifully written with moments of intense emotion and lyrical prose. It has achieved wide acclaim by some of Fiction Unbound’s favorite authors, including Rebecca Roanhorse who said this:
“Oh, my heart! So, so very good...Moreno-Garcia consistently knows how to find my heartstrings and pull them - not in a sappy way but in quiet moments of vulnerability and honesty. Her vision of 1920’s Mexico and, more strikingly, the Maya Underworld, are vivid and enchanting and bring the story alive. I’m convinced both are/were equally real.”
Moreno-Garcia insists that this book should not be classified as a young adult novel because it is not just a coming-of-age fantasy. She decries that if a woman writes a fantasy it gets classified as a YA, but she would label it a “bildungsroman,” because of its emphasis on character change. Wikipedia explains this literary genre:
“Bildungsroman (German pronunciation: [ˈbɪldʊŋs.ʁoˌmaːn]; “Bildung”, meaning “education”, and “Roman”, meaning “novel”; English: “novel of formation, education, culture”; “coming-of-age story”)[a][2] is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age),[3] in which character change is important.”
The editors in Wikipedia have cited as examples of this literary genre some of the top fantasy novels of all time: Dune by Frank Herbert, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, and A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursuala K. LeGuin. The protagonists take hard roads to mature into powerful men who have sacrificed much after learning painful lessons. Good company to be in!
If this is a bildungsroman, Casiopea still has a way to go to finish her evolution, much as Harry took 7 novels to mature. I foresee a sequel, though Moreno-Garcia ventures into many genres, including thriller, mystery, historical, and paranormal romance. (WARNING SPOILER NEXT SENTENCE: I think a follow-up or two could be warranted because Casiopea’s sacrifices are rewarded in the end with the granting of supernatural skills, but she has no time to explore these necromantic powers in this novel.)
Bildungsroman or not, the story is certainly a heroic journey. Refreshingly, the heroine Casiopea is not an orphan but a young woman with a live and influential mother! (Cause enough to cheer the writer – thank you for avoiding the orphan or meaningless mother tropes.) This young woman receives a call to adventure that she cannot reject because her life depends on success, but also because she knows her current life is a dead end. What makes this journey into the fantasy Underworld such fun is that Casiopea is brave and eager to see the wider world. She dares to dream about dancing, night swimming, and driving, about experiencing the outside world’s pleasures like a normal woman, not about conquering it like Paul Atreides or mastering it like Ged.
Another pleasure of the book is that the gods, while powerful in their own realms, are limited in Middleworld, and by fate. Hun Kamé and Vucub Kamé must use less-than-perfect humans like chess pieces or champions in their games of power against each other and against humans. They can’t just kill people and grow in strength; they need willing sacrifices from humans. Vucub Kamé must enlist abusive and self-centered Martín to try to win Casiopea over by promises and threats.
The cousins have to race each other across the black roads of Xibalba, defeating the road’s tricks and the underworld’s terrifying challenges with their own ingenuity, and the gods agree to abide by the outcome. They are fatalistic gods. Vucub Kamé foresees that his immortal brother will one day be reconstituted, but he can’t just destroy his bones to prevent him ever coming back. There are rules, and fate, and also the course of history, which even gods as powerful as these cannot change.
This is fun and beautiful fantasy journey through the Mexican Jazz Age and into the Mayan Underworld. Highly recommended to all, including young adults.
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