Gods of Jade and Shadow – THIS WAS AMAZING! (review!)

Title: Gods of Jade and Shadow.

Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Format: Hardcover.

Publisher: Del Rey.

Page count: 334.

Release day: July 23^rd 2019.

Genre: Adult, fantasy.

Rating: 5 stars.

What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)

The Mayan god of death sends a young woman on a harrowing, life-changing journey in this one-of-a-kind fairy tale inspired by Mexican folklore.

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.

Rating:
Characters: 9/10
Atmosphere: 10/10
Writing: 10/10
Plot: 9/10
Intrigue: 9/10
Logic: 9/10
Enjoyment: 10/10
Average: 9.43 (which means 5 stars!)

My thoughts:

I just want to scream about this book! It was just so good! Already after reading 20 pages, I fell in love and I could not stop thinking about it when I was not reading it!

I immediately fell in love because of the amazing writing! It was just so beautiful and I could not stop reading!

I absolutely love our main character Casiopea! She is quite mistreated by her family and is dreaming of leaving them and live her own life. Once the opportunity comes around to leave her family she takes it, well she kinda has to haha! Casiopea doesn’t know anything about the world beside where she lived, and I loved learning about the world with her. I also really liked that she questioned the god a lot, and did not always just did what he told her to!

The god is also a very interesting character, and I really like how he developed throughout the book. And the last character that I wanted to talk about is Martín, Casiopea’s cousin, he is not the kindest character, but I really liked how he was ‘used’ for this story. He does have some kind of redemption, but I honestly did not care for that too much. But I just liked how the gods brother was using him!

Personally I’m not familiar with Mayan mythology, so I loved learning some from this book! Because it is based on this mythology it does not only take place in our world but also in the Mayan underworld! The part that is in our world is Mexico 1927, and I absolutely loved that setting! Which I had never expected, but I loved the cars and the Jazz, and the cloths! It was great 🙂

I absolutely loved the plot, for some reason Casiopea and the god get bounded together, and they have to do certain things to not be bounded again. And by doing these things we got to learn so much about the Mayan mythology, and I just loved it!

Idk if this was a useful review, but I just really really loved it! I could not put it down, I loved the characters, the setting, the plot, the mythology!

I’m very excited to pick up Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s next release, Mexican Gothic, coming at the end of June!

Have you read this book? What did you think?