Heaven's Graveyard by Grace Curtis (Idolfire; Floating Hotel) is an intriguing science fantasy exploration of history, myth, and the fine line between fascination and obsession.
Cod's reverence for Aleya Ana-Ulai is not limited to thinking the mythic hero was her imaginary friend as a child. She has moved far from her home to build a career as an archeologist and search for every grain of truth to prove that the age-old heroine might have been real: where Aleya might have walked outside of the myths that have survived and where her final resting place might be. But Cod's focus on the ancient and mythic past has left her with a spartan life in the present. She's lonely, isolated, unaware of the political struggles in her own time--an impending war and the possibility of being cut off from her homeland--and how those struggles are connected to the secrets she is desperate to uncover.
Her mother is in a sanatorium and the only other person who might write to her is an ex-lover, Sparrow, whose first letters Cod chooses to burn. It seems like nothing might call Cod away from her research--until her old mentor sends a mysterious wire claiming he has uncovered something that she absolutely must return to see. But when Cod arrives home, it is just in time for the professor's funeral. She and Sparrow try to puzzle out his last discovery and who was responsible for his death. Cod unearths the secrets of the myths, a hidden city, the magic of the ancient gods, and pieces of her own past. In doing so, she learns what it will take for her to protect these things before they fall into the wrong hands.
Curtis has written an engaging science fantasy crossed with a murder mystery that probes human truths about the dangers of fixation, unrequited love, and meeting one's heroes (or even deities). She does so while maintaining a sense of humor and without becoming heavy-handed in her consideration about how stories shape the world and what it means to have a free world. Love and obsession might be intertwined, but grief pierces through all their forms. Through Cod, Curtis shows readers the high cost of getting everything you ever wanted, and what it means then to choose to "do the work of being good, the work of being brave." --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: Grace Curtis's sapphic science fantasy crossed with a murder mystery is a tantalizing exploration of what it could mean to meet one's hero.