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siavahda's review
5.0
This never stops being absolutely spectacular.
Maybe now I've read it FOUR TIMES I'll figure out how to review it properly!
REVIEW
HIGHLIGHTS
~God and the Devil are exes
~ghosts make wonderful girlfriends
~all the stories are true, just not the way you think
~Do Not Anger The Luggage
~chaos magician drag-queens
First thing: ignore the cover. It’s awful, I know, but I swear to you that don’t judge a book by its cover has never been so vital as it is here.
Because this is a peerless masterpiece that deserves, not five stars, but every single star in the sky.
Rituals is two stories entwined: that of Mara and Emma. Mara is a hunter of gods from before the dawn of time; Emma is a perfectly normal student in the 80s, who ends up with a ghost for a girlfriend and a mysterious employer who wants her to deal with supernatural shenanigans. At first glance, their respective parts of the book are extremely separate – Mara is telling a select bit of her (extremely ancient) history to the occultist Crowley in order to dissuade him from trying to become a god, and Emma is mediating between angels, asshole elves, and chaos-magician drag queens in London and LA. But it all feels incredibly cohesive, especially as the ancient history experienced by Mara becomes extremely relevant to the present Emma is living in. And although the two halves of the book are pretty different, they’re both excellent, and I wouldn’t be willing to give up either one just to make Rituals easier to explain and understand!
This is a book that very much defies any attempt to easily label it; Emma’s parts are not conventional Urban Fantasy despite their setting, and Mara’s are thematically closer to High Fantasy, but not in any way you’ve seen before. Described like that, it’s a mix that doesn’t seem like it should work; Emma’s very middle-class English approach to monster doll houses, Tories, and Hollywood executives is not something you would think to pair with the fall of the Aztec Empire, the birth of the phoenix, and God and Lucifer’s origin story! And yet it all goes together magnificently, just as Emma’s superpower of Talking Sensibly contrasts beautifully with Mara’s very deadly seriousness (and complete lack of macho bullshit). The result is that, whichever half of the book initially appeals to you, you very much end up also drawn into the one you expected not to care for as much, and the lessons and messages of the one inform our understanding of the other.
Plot-wise, it goes a little like this: we’re introduced first to Mara, and learn something of her mission and the way she operates in a bit that acts almost as a prologue, and introduces the framing device of her story – that is, the fact that she’s telling it herself, in first-person, to Crowley.
But Rituals starts properly with Emma, whose parts of the book are divided by very effective time-skips (and I say this as someone who usually despises time-skips). We meet her first in 1985, at uni, where she encounters the supernatural for the first time and is summarily ‘hired’ by an anonymous sponsor who conveys her tasks to her via dropping them into the mind of her ghost girlfriend. But there is no training montage that turns Emma into a katana-wielding urban warrior; instead, it rapidly becomes clear that her superpower is, as previously mentioned, Talking Sensibly to very unsensible magical beings and creatures. She’s exactly the kind of heroine you would expect a perfectly normal, middle-class English student of the time to be; lacking in dramatic magical powers, respectful of those who deserve it, but taking absolutely no nonsense from those who don’t. Her approach to the Upper Classes of British society, in particular, is just *chef’s kiss*
After an encounter with a god of Ancient Egypt, we next see her in the 90s dealing with a murderous art exhibition and acting as a witness for a great dynastic marriage joining elf and vampire clans (neither of whom come out looking sexy and glamourous after Kaveney is done with them!) Still in the 90s but a few years later, she babysits a composer out to perform an opera which has been foretold to bring about the end of the world, meeting with the echo of Marilyn Monroe, clashing with someone who might be the real Ultimate Evil, and being cheeky to God in the process. (Honestly, he deserved much worse.)
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
Maybe now I've read it FOUR TIMES I'll figure out how to review it properly!
REVIEW
HIGHLIGHTS
~God and the Devil are exes
~ghosts make wonderful girlfriends
~all the stories are true, just not the way you think
~Do Not Anger The Luggage
~chaos magician drag-queens
First thing: ignore the cover. It’s awful, I know, but I swear to you that don’t judge a book by its cover has never been so vital as it is here.
Because this is a peerless masterpiece that deserves, not five stars, but every single star in the sky.
Rituals is two stories entwined: that of Mara and Emma. Mara is a hunter of gods from before the dawn of time; Emma is a perfectly normal student in the 80s, who ends up with a ghost for a girlfriend and a mysterious employer who wants her to deal with supernatural shenanigans. At first glance, their respective parts of the book are extremely separate – Mara is telling a select bit of her (extremely ancient) history to the occultist Crowley in order to dissuade him from trying to become a god, and Emma is mediating between angels, asshole elves, and chaos-magician drag queens in London and LA. But it all feels incredibly cohesive, especially as the ancient history experienced by Mara becomes extremely relevant to the present Emma is living in. And although the two halves of the book are pretty different, they’re both excellent, and I wouldn’t be willing to give up either one just to make Rituals easier to explain and understand!
This is a book that very much defies any attempt to easily label it; Emma’s parts are not conventional Urban Fantasy despite their setting, and Mara’s are thematically closer to High Fantasy, but not in any way you’ve seen before. Described like that, it’s a mix that doesn’t seem like it should work; Emma’s very middle-class English approach to monster doll houses, Tories, and Hollywood executives is not something you would think to pair with the fall of the Aztec Empire, the birth of the phoenix, and God and Lucifer’s origin story! And yet it all goes together magnificently, just as Emma’s superpower of Talking Sensibly contrasts beautifully with Mara’s very deadly seriousness (and complete lack of macho bullshit). The result is that, whichever half of the book initially appeals to you, you very much end up also drawn into the one you expected not to care for as much, and the lessons and messages of the one inform our understanding of the other.
Plot-wise, it goes a little like this: we’re introduced first to Mara, and learn something of her mission and the way she operates in a bit that acts almost as a prologue, and introduces the framing device of her story – that is, the fact that she’s telling it herself, in first-person, to Crowley.
But Rituals starts properly with Emma, whose parts of the book are divided by very effective time-skips (and I say this as someone who usually despises time-skips). We meet her first in 1985, at uni, where she encounters the supernatural for the first time and is summarily ‘hired’ by an anonymous sponsor who conveys her tasks to her via dropping them into the mind of her ghost girlfriend. But there is no training montage that turns Emma into a katana-wielding urban warrior; instead, it rapidly becomes clear that her superpower is, as previously mentioned, Talking Sensibly to very unsensible magical beings and creatures. She’s exactly the kind of heroine you would expect a perfectly normal, middle-class English student of the time to be; lacking in dramatic magical powers, respectful of those who deserve it, but taking absolutely no nonsense from those who don’t. Her approach to the Upper Classes of British society, in particular, is just *chef’s kiss*
Or was it a mistake to think of people of that class as even sentient in a standard sense? Sometimes it helped Emma cope to assume that they did not, in fact, think; that they were zombie pawns moved by history and economic power. The fact that she found this idea comforting was worrying.
After an encounter with a god of Ancient Egypt, we next see her in the 90s dealing with a murderous art exhibition and acting as a witness for a great dynastic marriage joining elf and vampire clans (neither of whom come out looking sexy and glamourous after Kaveney is done with them!) Still in the 90s but a few years later, she babysits a composer out to perform an opera which has been foretold to bring about the end of the world, meeting with the echo of Marilyn Monroe, clashing with someone who might be the real Ultimate Evil, and being cheeky to God in the process. (Honestly, he deserved much worse.)
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
mashara's review
5.0
This might just be the best book I have ever read about gods.
It is not a book about religion or belief, in that way it is not at all like Good Omens, where the Powers That Be never even appear, because they are not important to the story.
In Rituals the mechanics of power are what matter. And what people would do to gather power.
This book might very well end up in a fire, so if you are one of those who cannot fathom other cannons beside Christianity, this book is not for you. Seriously.
Rituals is a book about how rituals of different kind makes gods. In the same way of politics, the best person for the job, is usually the one that doesn't want it, so you get the gods we've gotten.
I'm not usually inclined to tell what happens in my reviews but I think this books needs it.
The narrative is split in two, one is told by Mara The Huntress, a being as old as most gods and a constant reminder that somebody knew them when they were just a barely dressed ambition with some poorly feed followers (this seriously doesn't fly with the newer gods. Awesome scene: Mara in Jehovah's office). Her job is to punish those that rise to godhood by the means of the rituals of blood, so you can say her job has taken her all over the world, and she has seen what people would do to people for power. Because that is mostly the point, that it all starts with people, then legend, then myth...etc.
Then there is Emma. Emma has the coolest super power. Evah.
She has a great abundance of common sense. She is calm and collected, and above all, polite.
And armed with better weapons than most heroines, Emma battles evil, and the morally confused, by mostly talking to it. And yes, the help of her lover ghost Caroline (Long story, seriously, read the book).
Finally, the most interesting thing about this book, is that in all it's destruction of the dogmas of most religions (the rest are not mentioned), it's not in any way an atheist book. The gods exist. Is just that they somewhat seem more real looked though the eyes of Roz Kaveney.
PD: I will address the cover, because is the biggest disservice to a book I have seen in along while, so please, read the book, we might get another edition with a better cover.
It is not a book about religion or belief, in that way it is not at all like Good Omens, where the Powers That Be never even appear, because they are not important to the story.
In Rituals the mechanics of power are what matter. And what people would do to gather power.
This book might very well end up in a fire, so if you are one of those who cannot fathom other cannons beside Christianity, this book is not for you. Seriously.
Rituals is a book about how rituals of different kind makes gods. In the same way of politics, the best person for the job, is usually the one that doesn't want it, so you get the gods we've gotten.
I'm not usually inclined to tell what happens in my reviews but I think this books needs it.
The narrative is split in two, one is told by Mara The Huntress, a being as old as most gods and a constant reminder that somebody knew them when they were just a barely dressed ambition with some poorly feed followers (this seriously doesn't fly with the newer gods. Awesome scene: Mara in Jehovah's office). Her job is to punish those that rise to godhood by the means of the rituals of blood, so you can say her job has taken her all over the world, and she has seen what people would do to people for power. Because that is mostly the point, that it all starts with people, then legend, then myth...etc.
Then there is Emma. Emma has the coolest super power. Evah.
She has a great abundance of common sense. She is calm and collected, and above all, polite.
And armed with better weapons than most heroines, Emma battles evil, and the morally confused, by mostly talking to it. And yes, the help of her lover ghost Caroline (Long story, seriously, read the book).
Finally, the most interesting thing about this book, is that in all it's destruction of the dogmas of most religions (the rest are not mentioned), it's not in any way an atheist book. The gods exist. Is just that they somewhat seem more real looked though the eyes of Roz Kaveney.
PD: I will address the cover, because is the biggest disservice to a book I have seen in along while, so please, read the book, we might get another edition with a better cover.
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