Paola Santiago, traverser of haunted cactus fields, destroyer of legendary ghosts, and brief onetime possessor of supernatural-void power, was bored.
The opening line of this story is a perfect illumination of how the governing conceit of this collection of stories works. Although the author of this story—Tehlor Kay Mejia—is included on the cover and title page along with the other writers of the stories, the branding is directed toward the big name here: Rick Riordan. And, in fact, the conceit of this collection is that these are standalone stories starring characters who belong to the Rick Riordan “multiverse” of which Paola Santiago is just one of many. But Paola belongs to the “Riordan multiverse” not as a result of Riordan creating her or writing the series of novels which tells her adventures. Those who instantly recognized the name of the start of this story will likely already be familiar that she belongs expressly to the creative mind of the author of the story while also recognizing that she is part of that wider-ranging world inhabited by the multitude of other characters inhabiting the “Riordan multiverse.” Effectually, one need not be a fan of Riordan the writer to enjoy the stories contained within. This is a collection about characters and the opening line of this story is certainly an attention-grabber. Even those unfamiliar with Miss Santiago are likely to fall under the sway of such a enticing opening.
Last fall, when Nergal invaded Manhattan, he brought fourteen of his demons with him. I’d found two of them right here, in the dead of night, snuffling around in the trash, eating leftovers and rats. Over the following weeks I’d battled the rest with the help of Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of love and war, and her adopted daughter, the literally ass-kicking Belet. Nergal and his demons were long gone now. All but this one, apparently.
Another element to the conceit of this collection aside from encompassing Riordan’s multiverse is that the collection promises to deal with “mythic heroes.” It is not enough, in other words, merely to pluck the characters out of the Riordan universe they inhabit and plop them down into a conventional story. While one may find a story about teenage protagonist Sikander falling in love with an average everyday person appealing on a certain level, it would simply not work within the conceptualization of this project. These are characters who routinely do business on a mythic scale and so that mythos must remain intact here. The title of this story is enough to convey the idea that Sikander is not treading too far from the narrative turf in which he originated. For confirmation that mythic heroes will plentiful, just check out the reference to Ishtar and one can assume they are in familiar company.
Luckily, we’d been training for just such an emergency. We’d learned from Fix Gabi (a somewhat evil but now mostly reformed Gabi from another universe) that everyone has a unique personal cosmic signature (PCS) that identifies you as the you who is you and not some other you from some other universe. The yous from different universes all have their own PCSs. So we’d been practicing being able to locate each other, anywhere in the multiverse, by concentrating on our PCSs.
The opening story is a sort of meditation upon the idea of the multiverse. To a point; it is an action-oriented story and hardly a philosophical treatise. Yet, as indicated from the above quote, the very nature of the existence of multiple universes is probed, prodded and analyzed. Also as strongly indicated in the above quote, the concept of a multiverse is complex and rather complicated. The language of the narration may not do much to make things any clearer, but that is as it should be. A multiverse existence should be a murkier place than a universe. With the possible exception of “The Loneliest Demon” this story deal specifically with the notion of the divergence between a universe and a multiverse than any other story. Indeed, Sal’s narration opens up for discussion several different topics concerning the physics of various universes existing simultaneously. This focus makes it an ideal story with which to commence the collection.
