Review: Goddess of the North

Goddess of the North by Georgina Kamsika
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Might well have received five stars if the author knew how to use (or rather, when not to use) coordinate commas - those were a near-constant irritation. Some other copy editing issues too, not major - dangling modifiers, misplaced apostrophes, a couple of homonyms. Although I got it as a review copy from Netgalley, the publication date is in the past, so I assume these errors are in the published version.

Otherwise, a fine piece of urban fantasy writing, let down by the editing and the murky cover. It deals excellently with themes of immigration, racism, and who belongs to a place, through a mythological lens. It's absolutely woven into the plot that an immigrant can care for a place more, and have more stake in defending its people, than a "native" whose focus is on themselves and what they feel they've lost or are in danger of losing. It also questions the very idea of "nativism" on the way through. It's far from being a political screed, though, and the characters are an eclectic balance of flaws, foibles, and strengths, all of which cross ethnic lines. There's no simplistic "four legs good, two legs bad" going on here.

The protagonist is an aspect of a Hindu goddess who's living as a human and working as a police officer (she's a goddess of order). She has to balance imposing order on a world filled with supernatural beings with keeping the humans unaware of their activities and providing mundane explanations for the crimes they commit. She's also striving not to use her goddess power (because it will make her less human), and still dealing with her feelings about a betrayal by her mother thousands of years before, the nature of which is gradually revealed.

All of this provides plenty of tension and plot momentum, even before disaster strikes. As an urban fantasy, it's inevitably compared to Jim Butcher, and there are similarities: the characterization is rich; there's a layer of insight into human (and humanlike) nature and the way the world is for people and how they tend to behave; and multiple potential disasters of all sizes are constantly threatening the protagonist and those she cares about. (view spoiler)[Where it differs is that this author pulls her punches a little and uses literal divine intervention to prevent the disasters from having too much impact or much of a body count. Given that I don't enjoy "dark" stories, I can hardly complain about that, and yet it does rob the story of some of its edge. (hide spoiler)]

Has very strong potential, and a better copy editor could easily take it into five-star territory. I will be following this author, and looking eagerly for future books in the series.

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