Eight Million Gods

Call this Wen Spencer's extended mash note to the fannish Japan of anime and manga, as we have a protagonist touched by the divine trying to keep one step ahead of her implacable mother and who then becomes involved in a family brawl between Japanese gods. Not Spencer's best work but if you're

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already a fan of her work you'll probably like it. The cover is still quite ghastly though; this is why people turn to electronic editions.

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The writing was bad and the editing was worse--but I still finished it because it was so atmospheric. Nikki Delany flees to Japan to get away from her controlling mother, only to learn that the hypergraphia that has landed her in mental hospitals all her life is actually a godly ability to see the

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future. Paired up with Leo, a half-demon Shiva operative, and her friends Pixii and Miriam, who also have powers, she must defeat a maddened goddess before she destroys the world. The action takes place largely in Osaka and Kyoto.

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Nikki Delany is on the run from her mother. She is currently in Japan. Nikki has OCD and a condition that forces her to write. Her mother has had her committed to mental institutions, medicated and under the care of a huge number of psychiatrists who all try to convince her that she is insane.

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Nikki's mother is a rich, powerful senator. The only way to keep from being institutionalized again is to run.

Nikki uses her compulsion to write in order to write horror novels. When she is telling her friend Miriam about a scene that she has recently written and shared to her blog, she is overheard by a police officer. The Japanese police arrest her because someone seems to be recreating Nikki's fictional murders in the real world.

It is at this point that the story takes a turn to the paranormal. Her writing leads her to a katana that holds a kami, a Japanese nature spirit, who takes control of her body and moves her around. She is attacked by a tanuki impersonating one of the police officers who interviewed her. She writes about and then meets a shapeshifter that she first calls Scary Cat Dude.

The Scary Cat Dude, actually named Leo, is searching for his adoptive father and finds Nikki because she wrote about him and hopes she can write more and find out where he is. Nikki learns that she writes the truth which is horrifying to her because everyone she writes about dies in gruesome ways. Now she has written herself and her friends into the story and has to find a way to change the ending.

I really enjoyed the writing and the details about Japanese mythology. I loved Nikki who wasn't at all sure, at first, that she wasn't going insane. I loved her courage and her determination to have a life free from her mother's control.

Fans of urban fantasy, anime and Japanese culture are the ideal audience for this one.

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A little slow to start, but nice finish. What is a girl to do when she really can see monsters and possible futures? When her mother really is out to get her? When the other side of the world might not be far enough to run for safety? When the things that go bump in the night are real, she has to

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get tough!

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Love it. OK, there are some (unnecessarily?) gory bits, but not many. And they may actually be necessary. There are also a lot of excellent culture clash and attempted assimilation moments (American in Japan, speaking very little Japanese). Fascinating characters, each with their own motivations

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(actually, the mother seems the most mysterious to me. Everyone else, I think I understand them. I guess she's just a control freak - couldn't take any chances). And then, Nikki is not just trying to deal with Japanese culture - she's also abruptly introduced to the fact that magic and magical beings exist, and several of them are far too interested in her. And that quirk/compulsion she's been fighting and dealing with all her life? That's a magic power too - one with some seriously far-ranging effects. Fun people; I'd be pleased if they showed up in someone else's story, but I don't think I'd want to read another Nikki story.

Slight spoiler (if it wasn't obvious from the moment he showed up):

The end of the book isn't, exactly, a normal HEA. In fact, the line that keeps running through my mind is the old joke "he's a..., she's a..., they fight crime!"

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I don't know why but I didn't like this as much as Spencer's other books. I enjoyed it but I didn't love it. I would read a sequel if there was one but .. I'm not eagerly awaiting one. I think there were too many threads that fit together distantly and I had to keep reminding myself about who the

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non-main characters were. Possibly made more difficult because the many Japanese names were unfamiliar. Although I did made the Japanese setting interesting.

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An action-packed fantasy novel set mostly in Japan. While the characters are enjoyable and the premise is interesting (main character writes reality and enters unwittingly into a battle among Japanese gods and demons), the proliferation of names, Japanese words, and settings makes it really hard to

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follow. I made it through, though.

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It's not so much that this has more going on than some other of Wen Spencer's novels, just that it was harder for me to connect to the characters and to believe that the relationship between Nikki and Leo was even slightly probable in the time frame and what was happening. It felt very much as if

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connecting emotions didn't make it to the page. This was a re-read and not one thing felt familiar nor does it feel like any aspect of the story has sticking properties after this read.

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