The Maid And The Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko

I ADORE Jordan Ifueko, but when I first started reading this book back in August, I bounced off of it hard. It’s been a while since I read Ms Ifueko’s first book, the amazing and heartbreaking Raybearer, and while the follow-up Redemptor was also good, it felt oddly clinical in comparison. Very, very good, but nowhere near as flawlessly felt as its predecessor.

So I wasn’t sure whether this next novel in the Raybearer universe would hew more closely to the raw vulnerability of the first book or to the chilly beauty of the second. But I had a bigger problem to contend with upon cracking open The Maid And The Crocodile. As it’s been several years since I’ve read the main books of the series, I found myself completely flummoxed by the expectations this book had of me regarding the setting. While the narrative is immersive, for the first 15% or so of the novel, I struggled to remember the importance of the terms and people being casually mentioned. When the rest of my work reading threatened to overwhelm me, I set this novel aside till I had less deadline pressure and more time to just enjoy the unfolding story.

And enjoy it I did! With publishing taking the last two weeks of the year off, I finally had a chance to dive back into this novel, and oh how I loved it! Ms Ifueko takes the story of a young woman beset with both disadvantages and disability, and turns it into a ferocious romantasy of finding your power in community, and dignity in claiming both your rights and rightful rewards. This is not a book about being saved by a fairy godmother or by a prince. This is a book about questioning the system that makes it necessary for the underprivileged to be rescued at all, instead of being given the tools to forge their own fulfilling destinies.

Obviously, it’s a critique of late-stage capitalism. More importantly, it’s also a recommendation for the kind of community-based efforts espoused in some of my other favorite speculative fiction, primarily N K Jemisin’s novelette Emergency Skin. TMaTC is also a timely reminder that the work of building a just and equitable society is never finished, as unfortunately exhausting as that may sound. Even when our heroes actually make good on their promises and save the world, we everyday citizens need to empower ourselves to step up and make sure to correct injustice where we see it, too.

Small Sade is an orphan who was supposed to benefit from the sweeping reforms brought by the Raybearers when they made the world a better place. After she ages out of the orphanage system, she’s left to her own devices to find employment, hopefully as a maid in the city. Hard work isn’t something she’s afraid of — she’s young and energetic and practical, after all. But her efforts are understandably hampered by her mangled foot, injured while she was working as a child in a mill pre-reformation. She does have one supernatural advantage tho: she’s a Curse Eater, capable of cleansing others of their guilt via banishing the manifestations that plague them.

After accidentally binding herself to the god known as The Crocodile, she finds a job at a luxury inn. But the tasks she thought she was fully capable of soon turn insurmountable. Her newfound friends worry that she’s both taking on too much and giving too much of herself to people entirely happy to take advantage of her. Will Small Sade be able to figure out not only how to say no, but how to fight for a better life for herself, her peers and even those of far greater power?

In addition to telling Small Sade’s tale, TMaTC addresses the on-going stories of several characters from the Raybearer duology in immensely satisfying ways. Once I stopped racking my brain to remember who was who and what was what, this novel was swiftly transporting, with an ending as luminous as it is well thought out. It’s now my second favorite of Ms Ifueko’s books after the original Raybearer, tho honestly all her books are superlative.

The Maid And The Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko was published August 13 2024 by Harry N Abrams and is available from all good booksellers, including