"Gussy" by Jimmy Cajoleas

Full disclosure: I picked this book because it had a cool cover, and am therefore guilty of judging a book by its cover, even though its title sucks. Oh well.

It's about a girl who lives in a town, same as a lot of books out there. Except that the Great Doom is annoyed with the town, so she and one old dude are in charge of warding it off by doing weird rituals at it. But the old dude gets called away by a bunch of other people in charge of warding danger off towns by doing weird rituals at them, so the girl (named Gussy, short for Gustavina; it's a lame name) is in charge of warding the Great Doom off the town by doing weird rituals at it.

And so, of course, she messes up, and the Great Doom gets into the town anyway. (This is all in the cover blurb, by the way, so I'm not bothering with spoiler tags.) Most of the book is occupied with chasing it out again. Also, there's the lingering question of where the main character came from, and what the heck this Great Doom is anyway.

It was a thoroughly interesting book. Also, it's heavily implied that God exists in this world, but we've forgotten a lot about Him. They have "the One Who Listens," and you pray to him and stuff... yeah, it's God all right. Or else cribbed from Him. I'm not sure how that would fit in with the magic and the Great Doom and stuff, but we don't get a lot of exposition here.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E. Nothing objectionable, although parents of young children might not want them seeing all the weird rituals that the main characters do at the Great Doom.

This book gets 4 stars, because while it was good, I didn't like it well enough to give it 5. Like I said in my review of Unseen Magic, it was good, but not stellar.

Favorite lines:

    "New is often dangerous, Gustavina," he said. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

    "Nope," I said.

    Page 274.

(Endnote: The warding rituals aren't actually that weird. They're not evil or Satanic or anything; they're calling upon the power of the off-brand God, the One Who Listens, to keep out the power of the off-brand Devil, the Great Doom.)