Title: Prayers of Forges and Furnaces
Author: Aliette de Bodard
In: The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (Sean Wallace)
Rating Out of 5: 3.5 (Liked this)
My Bookshelves: Easy reading, Mythology, Steampunk
Pace: Medium
Format: Short story
Publisher: Robinson
Year: 
5th sentence, 74th page: And he picked up his things, one by one, and left.

She meets an old god who wants her help in destroying the world that she knows. In risking everything, she learns the true meaning of sacrifice.

I was quite surprised by this short story. Not because of the steampunk themes and threads running throughout, but because of the Mayan theme to it. Somehow I never really associated steampunk with Mayan. And, weirdly enough, it worked incredibly well.

Mayan mythology has a heavy influence of sacrifice and gods that aren’t actually “good” and this story is no different. It features a horrible god and sacrifice. The fact that the sacrifice actually got to live was kind of a surprise, and it worked so unbelievably well. It just didn’t really capture my attention like many of the other stories in this collection…

Image source: Amazon