The Jaguar Mask, by Michael J. DeLuca, is a challenging book, but well worth the effort. It’s overwhelming at times, with bright colors, loud music, crowds, personality clashes, and uncertain soul searches by people who don’t know where they’re going or what they’re supposed to be doing. I started out only able to read this book in small bites, taking time for digestion, but by the end, I was eating it up eagerly, hungry for the meanings that were emerging and the inspirations I could take from it. Its official release date is today, and I hope a lot of people get to experience it.

The book starts out with Cristina dreaming of a shooting at her mother’s eatery. She wakes up on a bus with her little brother, holding a nephew, hearing her phone ring; it turns out that her vision was true, and her mother had been killed, along with an important foreigner and a couple of other people. Cristina is an artist; the family turns to her, expecting her to take Mama’s place, but the pressures of her art and her visions eventually drive her away to seek her own place.

Next the book switches perspective to Felipe, an unlicensed taxi driver, relied upon by his roomates Aníbal and Luz, a pair of lovers who spend all their time and money on human rights protests against the corrupt, oppressive government. Felipe is parked, taking a call from Aníbal who’s asking for his help, when a man knocks on his window for a ride and won’t take no for an answer. It’s ex-Special Inspector Zamora, now an extragovernmental agent, who has decided to draft Felipe into his investigation of the assassination at the eatery. (But everyone calls Zamora El Bufo, which later events convince me should be translated as The Frog instead of The Clown.)

But Felipe is more than a hapless taxi-driver/assistant. He’s a jaguar in disguise, who wears a succession of masks to blend into human society. When the book opens, that’s all he’s trying to do, just keep his head down, but as the book progresses, he finds purpose and power.

Many other people in the book are trying to hide various secrets, from a terrified witness to the shooting, to Aníbal who can’t produce a passport because of the deadname, to a professor teaching revolution whose inner self is a secret, to a pair of would-be gay lovers in denial. The only significant character who knows what he’s doing and is completely open about it is Hugo, an art teacher who shelters Cristina for a while, as she learns to surrender to her visions and paint them. Eventually Cristina comes into her own understanding and transforms herself, after she and Felipe meet and begin working together.

I don’t recall that the country is explicitly named, but references are made to Totonicapán, a city in Guatemala. The year is not stated, but characters have smartphones. The man named as Director/President, Sonriente, is fictional, but Guatemala has had a history of political dictatorships prior to recent democratic elections.

The Jaguar Mask vividly depicts a society of people who are oppressed but mostly just trying to get by; however, the few, seemingly futile protesters are growing into the many. Despite the fantastical elements of character and plot, the book shows how determined optimism and persistent striving can transform not just people, but perhaps entire societies. I loved how everything came together in this book and how the main characters decided to take agency in their own lives and in helping others.

Content warnings: Murders, police brutality, police corruption, political corruption, poverty, apathy and hopelessness by some, references to sexual relationships.

Disclaimer: I received the eARC as a NetGalley suggestion, with the expectation that I’d review it.

Michael J. DeLuca’s novel The Jaguar Mask borrows from real events but adds depth with an exploration of Indigenous Mayan mythology, and it was a fascinating read!

Felix K’icab is a young man who feels most comfortable picking up fares in his cab on the chaotic streets of Guatemala City, distancing himself from the revolutionaries protesting governmental oppression and environmental degradation. Cristina Ramos is a visionary–literally–and “sees” her mother’s murder at the hands of men wielding machine guns and appearing to her as angels bringing death to the marketplace. As Cristina and Felix circle the truth of the murders and draw closer together, Felix finds it increasingly difficult to keep his human masks in place as his shapeshifting jaguar self emerges.

I enjoyed this novel and its themes. DeLuca’s writing sharply evokes a tone of danger, violence and the fantastical wrapped into one. Tonally, this reminded me of reading a William Gibson novel: The prose takes effort and attention, but you'll be rewarded for it. The Jaguar Mask benefits from a slower reading.

DeLuca’s story leads up to a pivotal moment in Guatemalan revolt, with tear gas laden street protests and citizen uprisings against a corrupt, foreign-backed oppressive regime after killings in a rural region. Another level showcases magical realism that enhances this narrative. There was so much of interest that the book might benefit from a “reader’s guide” from the author to teach about the Guatemalan conflict and ideas in Mayan shapeshifting mythology. I did some of my own research and learned a lot.

The Jaguar Mask will appeal if you’d like a slower paced, detailed and thoughtful exploration of the cycles of oppression and revolution as it explores uprising against injustice, revolt against the poisoning of our environment, and Indigenous rights. So worthwhile!

Thanks to Stelliform Press and NetGalley for a gifted copy.

An intricate, darkly gleaming tale set in a world that is painfully, profoundly real while every moment is also woven through with magic, visions, dreams, and shapeshifting secrets. There is depth and purpose here and the scope of the story is both magnificent and epic, even as it stays so close to its main characters.

The Jaguar Mask completely exceeded my expectations. The way it incorporated the unstable history of Guatemala and the current environmental threats was masterful, because it takes a backseat to the thrilling nature of the story, with fantastical elements of mythology and magic. Within the first two chapters, it presents a crime to be solved against the background of a poor area of Guatemala City. A humble taxi driver with an unusual secret is forced to collaborate with a louche detective, briefly bringing together the taxi driver and the daughter of one of the people who was gunned down. As the story progresses, their stories will converge until it comes to an exciting conclusion and a fantastical twist (not entirely unexpected by that point).

Felipe the taxi driver hides his true self behind a mask. The ex-detective known as El Bufo hides the fact he is no longer in office behind his expired badge. Inspector of National Civil Police Rodrigo Francisco Cuerva Zamora.

Cristina Ramos is an artist forced to paint pictures that will appeal to tourists. As she is bumping along on the bus to her pitch, with her baby son on her back, she has a vision of a gunman spraying her mother’s café with bullets, seeing government employees, a foreigner and her own mother being mown down. She knows it is true. She knows she will be the one who has to hold the family together.

Felipe, an unregistered cab driver, picks up an unattractive fare who demands to be taken to the market. Something weird about masks. Today it’s a conquistador…. He will pay Felipe a large sum of money if he joins him inside the Artisans’ Market. It turns out he is a detective with an expired licence, El Bufo, being given a chance to help solve the case by the detective who got him suspended. This crime scene is Christina Ramos’s mother’s café. Eufemia Yochi Ramos was a grandmother, famous for her fried chicken. The foreigner was a former ambassador and human rights lobbyist, David Alden Antonellis.

“El Bufo had called him ‘Félix’, and now Felipe needed to know what El Bufo knew about anthropomorphic cats in conquistador masks.” The last time he’d discussed this, it had been with his half-brother Rubén and those twelve words had changed his life; he’d left his job with the bus and gone to the city. His mask had slipped, too many people had seen who he was… For some reason he thinks about the war that nobody talks about. Nothing is clear.

Problems
The first two chapters introduce too much, making them extremely difficult to understand who the characters are and what is happening. Once I’d got past that, I was fully absorbed in the story.

Names of Guatemalan food and drink and other Spanish terms are not explained. That made me start googling, and pulling me away from the book. This is not conducive to staying with it and not falling down a rabbit hole. Footnotes would have been a perfect way of solving this problem. After all, talking about food and drink are wonderful ways of creating a sense of place. And sense of place is one of the strengths of The Jaguar Mask. Michael DeLuca writes fantastic descriptions of the different cityscapes, the slums, the hill towns and the horrific landscapes created by the silver extraction industry and the pollution of refuse dumps.

This book is amazing and I hope many more people read it. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for sending me a free ARC. My review is my unbiased opinion after reading.

Unfortunately I had to DNF this wonderful book at around 50%. The world building was immaculate and I loved the characters. The descriptions were great and the writing was so interesting!!
Unfortunately it was not for me at this point... I will probably pick it up again when I have the chance!!
One thing I didn't like that had weight on me not finishing the book was maybe that the pace was a bit confusing at times and it did help me focus to the story...

The summary created an eager anticipation for me. But I found the storytelling somewhat confusing. The idea of a mask(s) releasing or hiding the true nature of characters is intriguing. The background of culture/tradition vs political power and oppression is vivid. But the author just lost me a bit when I struggled to connect with the (magical realism?) nature of the main characters. I look forward to publication date to perhaps re-examine this tale.

This supernatural, surreal thriller is a stunner. While the beginning felt a bit over-written at first, I soon relaxed into the author's slowly rolling, gorgeous prose and found myself reading a political thriller as poetic as any verse I've ever read. A murder, a not-human, illegal cabbie, an artist whose visions are out of her control, her family, the rich and poor, the police and secret agencies, full of corruption but also desire for good--it all blends together like marbled silk. The stories come out at their own pace, and the narrative jumps frequently, leaving the reader to follow along parkour-style. Go read it; open it up, and relax into the pace and depths of description, and savor it.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me an e-arc of this book in exchange for a review!

Boy this story has layers, where the main characters' involvement is only surface level in the grand scheme of the larger systemic issues that are hinted at throughout the book in relation to class and capitalism. I found myself more interested in how these characters were going to get involved with the larger issues happening, which never happened, but I still found this entertaining. The magic in this book is soooo cool. It adds so much to the atmosphere and was one of the main reasons I picked this up in the first place, and it didn't disappoint.

At times I found the pacing of this difficult, as some of the chapters are very long, but if that isn't a bother to you then it won't be an issue!

TLDR: This was a very well-written and well-executed book, but I was not the target audience for this book due to the magical realism elements and the plot presentation style.

The Jaguar Mask by Michael J. DeLuca is another fantastic addition to Stelliform Press's catalog. DeLuca is a repeat author for Stelliform and is a growing name withing the solarpunk genre. His masterful writing style and deft character development are on full display to a great effect. The only problem with this book: I am not the target audience but this is only because I don't usually enjoy magical realism.

The book is about Felipe/Felix, a jaguar who, through the aid of various masks, can appear as human, and Cristina, a young women whose mother was recently a collatoral fatality in a politically motivated assassination. Felipe/Felix lives with Luz and Anibal, who are both involved in protest movements against the Guatemalan government. Cristina is just trying to make it through her grief and coming to terms with what has happened. She is an artist who is struggling with the tension between needing to make money to care for her nephews (who were foisted upon her by her absent sister) and wanting to paint her visions. The two are brought together because of the murder and because Luz and Anibal's activism, leading them on a journey through Guatemala to write the wrongs in the world and the wrongs they've perpetuated against themselves, all within the backdrop of the exploitative and destructive mining operations that are decimating Guatemala and its indigeneous human and nonhuman populations.

Throughout the whole book, DeLuca asks the reader to just accept certaint things as true, and this is the element of magical realism I don't usually like. If there is going to be some sort of magical or fantastical element. For instance, the mechanics of Felipe/Felix's jaguare shifting is never really discussed. Cristina comments that she doesn't know how he uses the gear shift in his car with his paws; she doesn't hold his hand but specifically comments on holding his paw, although obviously a jaguar would need all four feet to walk--things like that. These kinds of things are very common in magical realism, and magical realism is an excellent choice for this story--the genre emerged out of post-colonial protests, movements, and activism in the broadest defined Latin world so in a book that is explicitly about protest and activist movements agaisnt neo-imperialist powers in Guatemala magical realism is not only the natural but probably the necessary choice. I am not faulting the book; in fact, I am praising the book for this choice. I just personally don't like this genre as a reader.

I absolutely loved the fantasy part of this book. It was so interesting to read about these characters and their development. But overall, I struggled to get through it. It was very slow and I was confused as to what was happening at least half of the time.

For me personally there was both too much going on and nothing really at the same time. I feel like the main characters were barely involved in anything (and that's part of their characters but makes you feel like you're watching from afar). At around 80% it got better, but that's a lot of dedication to get through a book. It was way more literary than I expected it to be, but the setting felt exactly the way it should.

I really hate that I’m the first to review this novel and my opinion is unfavourable. This was not very engaging to me. I’m not sure what it was. Maybe the beginning never grabbed my attention and nothing did after. This reads more like literary fiction more than anything else. The type that annoys me— slow, self indulgent, lots of the everyday mundane, following characters through feelings and emotions particularly grief, fear and injustice. Granted I could only push myself up to 100 pages so what do I know. I did like that the presentation of culture, political unrest and Guatemalan city life did feel grounded and authentic. Needed more sci-fi than sad fiction, or at least more of a balance of both genres.

*Thank you M.J. DeLuca and Stelliform Press for, The Jaguar Mask ARC.