Ace, the nameless one, the Soul Eater, is cursed and
enslaved. Banished from Duat, bound to his duty on Earth serving his master and
reluctantly linked to a woman who mocks him every day with her presence, he
doesn’t have a happy life. The one thing he does want to do is avoid the gods
however he can
But when Bastet comes back into his life things get a
little more complicated. Not least because she’s his ex-wife
Egyptian gods! Anyone who has been reading Fangs for any
length of time knows we love ourselves some good mythology and, surprisingly,
the Egyptians are oddly uncommon in the genre, I’ve found. Which is a shame
because I’d love to dive into an Egyptian story
And here we have the Egyptian gods in a modern world
setting along with a fun, action packed story. And I do really like the plot,
the action is extremely well paced but it doesn’t consume the book to the point
where it feels like there is no plot as can sometimes happen. I like the
characters and their interactions, their complexities and temptations, their
histories and difficulties. They work really well together and with the world
they’re involved in.
But I find myself somewhat disappointed by that huge
potential not especially being examined. What excited me about this was
Egyptian gods in the modern world – that would have been exciting and
interesting and deep and we could bring in lots of excellent mythology. But… we
didn’t really see the Egyptian gods. Oh, Osiris and Isis are there – but they’re
just mighty powerful evil people. You could have changed their names to be
anything or anyone, they could be powerful mages, fallen angels, pretty much
anything which is kind of depressing. There was no sense to me of them being
actually Osiris or Isis. They were just the big powerful antagonists the
culture, the history, the resonance behind what they are is missing
On top of that, I really dislike how Isis is portrayed –
conniving and manipulative? I could accept that even if it is beneath Isis (the
paragon wife and mother, the mother goddess, goddess of artisans and maidens
and so much more) – but to have her sexually shamed – to have Osiris happily .
To demonise her both through her sexuality (and her bisexuality for extra
unpleasant tropiness) and using that sexuality as a classic marker of evil/depravity/immorality/corruption
would be generally gross with any female antagonist – but to decide to do this
with the actual lore around Isis and what she could have been just seems to add
totally wasted opportunity on top of an utterly tired trope.
