They broke up once and it’s been a couple of years since they’ve seen each other. He moved to L.A. and she moved to New York City. Ward Dunbar and Camille Buhay decide to move, unbeknownst to either of them, to London and pursue fresh careers.

Ah, they meet again and love flairs up like a bonfire and they’re a couple again.

Bored petty gods are never a good thing, especially a couple who are tired of the lengthy war between an Eastern Faction and a Western one. They decide to liven up the endless kerfuffle by picking two mortals to decide the winners, have them work in separate places trapped in the confines of peculiar shops. Very peculiar, trust me. Ward and Camille are the chess pieces in these machinations. Not only confined in magical shops, they have no obvious means of communicating. No way of knowing what’s going on outside their doors. So reluctantly, they bring the intelligence and deductive reasoning to fulfill their tasks for two sets of gods on opposing sides who are stagnating in a grudge fight which has been deadlocked since the Medieval period.

So day in and day out Ward and Camille fulfill their shop duties hoping to be released from their locked existence. Ward deals with a pair of gods who just can’t decide which fabulous artifact to purchase and Camille deals with ghosts bringing in their most precious possession to be weighed on a mysterious scale. If it balances, the ghost is able to move on to another “place” which remains vague throughout the story. She gets to deal mostly with an urbane god with all kinds of outwardly helpful but eternally selfish info and a female goddess who is downright scary.

Lim has created a real treat of an idea and engaging but slippery characters. Her descriptions and dialogue are fine.

The novel just buzzes along with the two mortals working hard to figure out the gods’ real needs and once discovered, can Ward and Camille untangle themselves, make it through the gods ploys and survive to make a new life for themselves.

Trust me, the ending does ratchet up as the two humans ridden by anxiety try harder and harder in hopes to complete their tasks quickly, get set free and satisfy their godly manipulators.

What is a great touch, is there are other, higher ranking gods who have fricking had enough (Time and Chaos) and they decide to have an impromptu tribunal to bring the war to an end.

And of Ward and Camille—-Lim reveals the ultimate results of their labors. Really…a great ending and an overall tight read. ~~ Sue Martin

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