Of Blood and Lightning
Micki Janae’s novel Of Blood and Lightning sizzles with excitement as a diverse group of high schoolers are swept into a world of myths.
Seventeen-year-old Ophelia is a recent orphan following the death of her father. She moves to North Dakota with her aunt and uncle. There, Ophelia is embraced by a group of friends who enjoy cliff-diving into a river, climbing water towers, and seeking adventures. Despite their friendship, Ophelia struggles to process the loss of her father. She is plagued by vivid dreams of mythical figures who feel too real.
As Ophelia’s mysterious dreams increase in intensity and her friends experience similar nightmares, Ophelia realizes that her aunt and uncle are withholding information about her father. Ophelia demands to learn the truth. After another dream, she gains the ability to generate lightning from her skin and storms in the sky, having inherited the powers of the Greek god of lightning, Zeus. Her friends also inherit strange new powers, together forming a pantheon and assuming the responsibilities of the Greek and Roman gods: they have access to Artemis’s arrows and Hades’s bident and connection to the underworld, for example. And even as Ophelia is pushed to save the world with magic, she discovers that her father’s death was far from an accident.
“Holy shit,” mutters Ophelia when a sword of lightning appears in her hands for the first time. Such earthiness is characteristic of the prose, whose levity contrasts well with the novel’s dark backdrop. And while the book doesn’t directly deal with contemporary issues of racial equity, its recentering of not heretofore diverse stories on a BIPOC cast is fresh.
Recasting ideas from Greek mythology, Of Blood and Lightning is an engrossing epic novel in which teenagers battle an older generation of deities and monsters.
Reviewed by
Mike Good
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
