Eight Million Gods
By (Author) Wen Spencer
Baen Books
Baen Books
6th April 2013
United States
Hardback
368
Width 156mm, Height 235mm, Spine 33mm
549g
First entry in a new urban fantasy saga by the creator of the popular Tinker contemporary fantasy/SF series. A young American expat writer in Japan suffering from OCD tries to figure out if shes crazy or not while solving a murder that may be part of a war among Japanese deities.
A contemporary fantasy of mystery and death as American expats battle Japanese gods and monsters to retrieve an ancient artifact that can destroy the world.
On Saturday afternoon, Nikki Delany thought, "George Wilson, in the kitchen, with a blender." By dinner, she had killed George and posted his gory murder to her blog. The next day, she put on her mourning clothes and went out to meet her best friend for lunch to discuss finding a replacement for her love interest.
Nikki is a horror novelist. Her choice of career is dictated by an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that forces her to write stories of death and destruction. She can't control it, doesn't understand it, but can use it to make money anywhere in the world. Currently "anywhere" is in Japan, hiding from her mother who sees Nikki's OCD as proof she's mentally unstable. Nikki's fragile peace starts to fall apart when the police arrest her for the murder of an American expatriate. Someone killed him with a blender.
Reality starts to unravel around Nikki. She's attacked by a raccoon in a business suit. After a series of blackouts, shes accompanied by a boy that no one else can see, a boy who claims to be a god. Is she really being pursued by Japanese mythsor is she simply going insane
What Nikki does know for sure is that the bodies are piling up, her mother has arrived in Japan to lock her up for the rest of her lifeand her novels always end with everyone dead.
About Eight Million Gods:
"Spencer is a good storyteller, with a knack for pulling interesting plot surprises out of left field. . . . A well-paced story with interesting characters and setting. . . ." Asimovs
Eight Million Gods is a wonderfully weird romp through Japanese mythology, culture shock, fan culture and the ability to write your own happy ending. It is diverting and entertaining fantasy." Galveston County Daily News
About Wen Spenser:
Wit and intelligence inform this off-beat, tongue-in-cheek fantasy. Furious actiongood characterization, playful eroticism and well-developed folklorelift this well above the fantasy average . Buffy fans should find a lot to like in the book's resourceful heroine.Publishers Weekly on series debut Tinker
Spencer's intertwining of current Earth technology and otherworldly elven magic is quite ingenious. Booklist on the Elfhome series
Comprehensive Teacher's Guide available.
John W. Campbell Award Winner Wen Spencer resides in paradise in Hilo, Hawaii with two volcanoes overlooking her home. Spencer says that she often wakes up and exclaims "Oh my god, I live on an island in the middle of the Pacific!" According to Spencer, she lives with "my Dali Llama-like husband, my autistic teenage son, and two cats (one of which is recovering from mental illness). All of which makes for very odd home life at times." Spencer's love of Japanese anime and manga flavors her writing. Her novel Tinker won the 2003 Sapphire Award for Best Science Fiction Romance and was a finalist for the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award for Fantasy Novel. Her Wolf Who Rules was a Top Pick by Romantic Times and given their top rating of four and a half stars. Other Baen books include space opera thriller Endless Blue and Elfhome, third entry in the Tinker series.