This was YA wasn’t it? Oh. It wasn’t? Right. Silvia Moreno-García explains why in her own (goodreads) review of the book…anyway, I’d have liked this when I was fifteen.

If you go into this reading it for what it is and not comparing it to The Beautiful Ones (which I loved and will likely be one of my faves on the year), you might enjoy the double-whammy historical context (ancient Mayan clashes with the Jazz Age of 1920s Mexico City) and all the brilliant colours and new lights and fashion once we get away from the small patriarchal mountain village where the story begins.

I was expecting a lot more insight into Mayan mythology and culture, but it got a bit tripped up in a pseudo-teenage romance (with a 1000 year teenager) and the straight line of an uncomplicated journey from Yucatán to Tijuana. We get glimpses of fascinating setting along the way, and maybe this might call itself an adventure, but I was never on the edge of my seat. The premise was good and even the storyline was interesting as it progressed, but the execution lacked the connection needed to truly enthral. There were no insurmountable tests for these characters, they were never in any real danger, and you don’t get a sense of risk in any of the risks taken. (Also, without context, I feel like the snakes were weird and incongruent to the turning of this story, even if they are relevant to the mythology in a greater sense.)

Overall it was rather void of emotion, and I didn’t believe the love story—at least not for Casiopeia. Hun-Kume was wooden, but at least he was leaning on culture of 1000 years and being stuck in his teenage body—so ‘wooden’ was true to character. He was kinda adorable in that way, and some of the dialogue, while truly wooden and awkward, was cute, charming.

I didn’t dislike Casiopeia. She had qualities and depth that made her interesting—no I mean it, I would for sure be this girl’s friend—and you wanted to know what would happen to her, but she was almost a bit disconnected from her own tumultuous emotion—or what should have been turmoil. She took it on the chin, which was cool, but even when she got ‘concussed’ (figuratively) she didn’t care enough, it didn’t hurt enough. It made her hard to empathise with as the story continued.

The potential was there for a great mythology story (Persephone and Hades-like with an old Mayan-gods twist) but even in the churning of oceans and hurling of boulders and the agony of a death-sacrifice, this was…tame.

I would have preferred to break a sweat and lose some fingernails while I writhed with a breaking heart on the floor in the reading...

Maybe that’s just me.