Confessions of a Deathmaiden by Ruth Francisco
The book starts out seeming science-fictionish, as the whole “deathmaiden term is the job description for the main character. A deathmaiden is the opposite of a midwife – instead of ushering a new person into life, the deathmaiden helps them “cross over” and have a peaceful death. And while this is important to the telling of the story, the it doesn’t veer into a mystical otherworld. And in fact it gets more interesting as it becomes a murder-mystery, very much grounded in the real, contemporary world.
I do love fiction that teaches me something in the process of telling me a story, and while reading this book, I learned more of Mayan and central American history than I had known before. And I also appreciate when an author describes a place, a real place, well. Because I have been to the Getty Museum, and her descriptions of it rang true, it was easy to buy into her descriptions of places I’ve never been, and pieces of art I’ve never seen.
A good story, well-written, I’d recommend it more to mystery/detective story lovers than science fiction or speculative science fiction readers, though it does contain quite a bit of information about genetics, only some of it ‘tweaked’ for the story.