★★★☆☆ To Cage a God, by Elizabeth May
No gods were caged in the telling of this story
To Cage a God
Elizabeth May
No gods were caged in the telling of this story
A common idea in fantasy is that a sorcerer is a person who has a continuing relationship with a magical spirit of some kind, and the spirit is the thing that actually does magic for the sorcerer. Good examples are the Penric and Desdemona series, or the Bartimaeus series. Elizabeth May's To Cage a God has sorcerers of this type. The sorcerers are called alureans and the spirit things are called zmei -- they are the "gods" referred to in the title. A zmeya is imprisoned within each alurean (thus the title To Cage a God) and can be called on to do magical things for that person. As you might expect, zmei differ in their capabilities and in their willingness to cooperate, so we have less and more powerful alureans. Most of the alureans are people of noble ancestry -- the rulers. The most powerful of these is Empress Isidora, who is the brutal oppressor of her people.
No gods were caged in the telling of this story. That surprised me a bit. Although the title To Cage a God doesn't actually promise that the caging of gods will occur in the course of the action, I made that assumption. It turned out to be mistaken. All caged gods in this book were caged before the story begins.
Most of the caged gods are inside alurean nobles. It is a little vague how they got there -- apparently the children of alureans themselves become cages for gods of their own, though the mechanisms through which that occurs were entirely unclear to me. In addition, two of the heroes of the story, sisters Galina and Sera, acquired their gods through biotechnological (my word) manipulations some twenty years previous. (I have no hesitation in telling you this, because it's in the publisher's blurb.) Galina and Sera are leaders of the resistance, who have a plot to overthrow the Empress and establish something that looks more like a democracy.
Aside from palace intrigue, the plot consists mostly of two romances (also mentioned in the blurb). One is a lesbian Cinderella story. That one was rather charming. The second is a trope I hate, in which an admirable hero has the hots for a total jerk who lacks judgment or moral compass. And of course whenever they get together they are thrown into transports of sexual arousal and bad judgment, which we get to read about in sometimes rather explicit detail. So, yeah, it's the "Good Girl and irresistibly hot Bad Boy" cliché. Eww... Yuck.
In summary, it does what it says on the tin. It's a competent Young Adult/New Adult fantasy. It's readable but never surprises.
Thanks to NetGalley and DAW for an advance reader copy. This review expresses my honest opinions.