Gods of Jade and Shadow

Gods of Jade and Shadow is a historical fantasy novel by the Mexican-Canadian writer Silvia Moreno-Garcia, first published by Del Rey in July 2019. It is set in the late 1920s, as Mexico moves out of the revolutionary era and into the Jazz Age.

After her father dies, Casiopea Tun and her mother return to the Mayan town of Uukumil in the Yucatán, where Casiopea grows up as an unwanted poor relation in the house of her wealthy grandfather. Her cousin Martín, who is spoiled and bitter, makes her life worse, and at eighteen she works as a servant and dreams of getting away.

In a forbidden chest in her grandfather's bedroom she finds the bones of the Mayan death god Hun-Kamé. A shard of bone pierces her thumb and restores him to a semblance of life, and the god, now bound to her, recruits her for the quest to recover the parts of his body that his twin brother and rival Vucub-Kamé has scattered. The book draws on Mexican folklore and Mayan myth rather than on the European tradition that fantasy usually borrows from.