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I found myself saying "wow" a lot as I began reading this first novel. "Wow", she can really write well. "Wow" she has me buying into her intriguing premise. "Wow, she even got me to accept a lot of talk about spirit and stuff like that. Alas, the wows stopped. But this is an author to watch. Ruth Francisco's character, Frances Oliver is a "deathmaiden"; her job is to help the dying, in the way, apparently, that a midwife assists new lives. The concept is presented very well, believably and Frances is an intriguing character. One of her clients is a young boy; she determines that he is not ready to die, and yet he dies. He's taken away too quickly, alone. Where was his mother, who was at the house only a short time before? Tomas dies with a small jade figure in his hand; Frances takes it and learns that it is Mayan. From there, I felt the story unraveled, or rather, raveled. It became too busy, too frantic, with too many things happening. Frances goes off to Mexico alone to learn where Tomas came from. That wasn't his mother, he should not have died, okay, that I bought. But the conspiracies (I'm not big on conspiracy books) and the violence (there were several pages of graphic torture I had to completely skip) lost me. The details about the tribes, the land, the people were all very intriguing and well-written, but this book felt like it started at a good pace and then tumbled, frenzied and crazed, to the resolution. And the resolution, while still mostly plausible contained an element of super-natural that put it over the top for me. Francisco can write well. That I was willing to buy into the whole (pardon me) touchy-feely aspect of this character's fictitious job, that she managed, mostly, to avoid long boring explanations of the nature of the work of the "deathmaiden" (are there no men who can do this job?) (I know, they haven't changed "midwife" either), are all to her credit, as I can be fairly cynical. But there was, for me, too much going on; organ harvesting, creepy doctors, evil men, paranoia, ranting politicians, all messed up what was a clean story line and a fine story-telling style.
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, May 2003
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