Bingo 19: Queer Lives
I’m not sure where I saw the blurb for Masters of Death but it was pretty catchy; it also did not hint at the queerness within, but that’s ok. I have to say, I found this pretty enjoyable. There are about 8 main characters, some more main than others, and half of the book revolves around them finding or re-finding their special person. Everyone is ‘inter-species’ to some extent, and one of the more important couples is same sex; the member of this pair we the most from seems to be bi or maybe pan, but his soul-mate is another guy; they are not the same flavor of supernatural, although both do have some human to them. One of the big mysteries, once their connection is set up, is whether or not they can get over their individual traumas and other stuff to get back together after things happened in centuries past.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around two eventually interconnected problems; Viola the vampire realtor in Chicago has to sell Tom’s house, but Tom is now a poltergeist having been recently murdered and he refuses to leave until his murder is solved. They turn to Fox D’Mora, a human medium who is mostly a fraud but he is also genuinely the godson of Death; Death seems to have disappeared, which means Fox can’t get his help with fixing the Tom problem. The archangels Gabriel and Raphael are involved, and suddenly everyone’s talking about this game that Death apparently always wins because he kind of cheats, but the only rule is ‘Don’t lose’, and it’s apparently possible to get want you wanted and still lose Unless you don’t’ have anything to lose. The game turns out to be a variation on the lyrics from one of the songs from The Princess and the Frog, something like “You’ll get what you want but lose what you had”; there’s also a lot of genuine but not always friends on the other side.
This is not a story about plot, not really (another ‘queer’ but in a far more general sense kind of factor); it’s more about gradually learning about the characters, and their pasts, which leads to connections to the now. Some of the others drawn into things are an angel and the Reaper (aka soldier of Lucifer) who obviously are into each other, the demon (she’s a personal trainer in the human world), and a kind of mysterious thief. Everyone sort of gets drawn into the game which reveals their backstory which either helps them find or re-find their life partner, and since some of these individuals are effectively immortal, that’s kind of part of the challenge.
In spite of all the complicated personal stuff, there’s also some pretty entertaining bits; the dialogue is generally pretty snappy, and then you get some of the ironically amusing moments such as when the Queen of Virtue (married to the demon King of Vice) declares that she may rule virtue but does not embody it; given who and what she is (she’s part of the story too) makes it even more fun as long as you don’t think about it too hard; that way lies an existential philosophical headache of annoyance. That’s the other thing about the novel; if you want straightforward conventional story and characters, maybe you put this one down and back away slowly.