Elysium Girls is available now.
This story supposedly had it all: goddesses playing a life and death game with humanity as the pieces, witch magic, dustbowl setting, a daemon made human and the gorgeous steampunky horses on the cover.
The story revolves around Sal, a mis-fit girl, ostracized by the cursed town that has become a gameboard for the goddesses Life and Death. She is always trying to do the right thing, no matter how horribly or unfairly she is treated. Of course, she has magic. She eventually gets kicked out (unfairly) to die alone, but joins up with an outcast girl gang.
These girls were the predictable group of orphans who had found each other as a substitute family. Each was so devoted to one other that none really differentiated themselves, other than the big one, the small one, the mechanic, the cook, etc, and were otherwise pretty much interchangeable.
The story was meandering with long stretches where nothing of substance happens. Like, seriously, what was the point of the Laredo Boys? Totally added nothing to the story except to try to show how bad-ass the girl gang was? Except that didn't work, because they had to be saved by the male daemon, so...
Speaking of which, Asa was the only interesting character in the whole story, and the only one who showed a spark of personality.
So Sal and the girls return to the doomed city, which had left her to die, to save them from annihilation.
There was no tension and it was a slog to get through. The world is not fleshed out: the goddesses and their existence was not well-defined, the magic itself is not explained, the mob-mentality townspeople were horrible racists not worth saving and the overarching feeling of the book is dusty despair. And those awesome horses were just a cursory side note. I could not get immersed in this story, nor did I care about the characters, so the story fell flat for me. 2.5 stars.
Thanks to Net Galley and Disney Books for the free eARC.
