One day, while browsing my library’s online catalog, I came across Labyrinth Lost (2016) by Zoraida Córdova, and it immediately checked all my boxes. I’ve been trying to read more books by women of color (a very rewarding goal), I love modern fantasy, and I’m a sucker for stories about labyrinths. That afternoon, I dove into this fantastic book, full of rich world-building and featuring a bi protagonist. I was even more thrilled to discover it’s the first in a trilogy and that the other two books were already published.
I highly recommend the entire trilogy, but I’m going to spend most of this review focusing on the first book of the Brooklyn Brujas series, Labyrinth Lost, because it’s the most bi of the three. That being said, I devoured the trilogy in a week, so don’t expect to stop after the first one. There will be some spoilers in here, but I won’t give away anything too big.
The story starts with Alex, just a normal angsty high school student, one of three sisters, growing up in Brooklyn. Alex and her family are far from average though. Alex comes from a family of witches, or brujas. Her Deathday ceremony is quickly approaching, and Alex is expected to claim her full bruja power on that day. The only problem? Alex doesn’t want to claim her powers. She doesn’t want to be a bruja; she blames magic for the disappearance of her father and wants nothing to do with it.
Enter Nova. Nova is a handsome young brujo with black tattoos snaking up his arms. He tells Alex that she can reject her power at her Deathday celebration, which of course, Alex does. Something goes horribly wrong, and Alex’s family is transported to Los Lagos, a shady underworld full of supernatural beings and some angry deities. Horrified, Alex recruits Nova to help her find her family, and together they travel to Los Lagos on a rescue mission. Of course, Los Lagos is a dangerous place, and as they outwit, battle, and become allies with various creatures, the sexual tension between the two begins to grow. On their journey, they eventually run into Alex’s best friend, Rishi. Rishi, looking for Alex, jumped through the portal to Los Lagos to save her friend. A young bi love triangle ensues as they all rush to save the world.
I really loved the rich world that Córdova created. Los Lagos is full of beings from various Latin American myths that create a really interesting world. I was super happy that I had two more books in this world to enjoy. Alex has to use her bruja knowledge, her family’s cantos (basically spells), and her memories of these stories to make her way through Los Lagos. Even without the bi love triangle, this is just a really great YA fantasy novel with all the genre tropes you could want, but set in a totally fresh world.
But there is a bi love triangle (hooray), so let’s talk about that. Rishi is Alex’s best friend from the beginning of the book, and it’s clear that they’ve been besties for some time. Alex frequently describes Rishi’s effortless style and obviously really admires her friend. It actually reminds me a lot of being 16 like Alex, and not completely understanding my attraction to women. It took me a while to sort out whether I really liked a girl’s fashion sense or if I just really liked the girl. Like “like liked”. Some readers of Labyrinth Lost have complained that the love story with Rishi was less developed than the story with Nova, but the slight awkwardness of that development felt real and intensely familiar. They had a long friendship full of mutual admiration, and it seems like they both slowly found out that that admiration was more than just friendship. The progression of “I love your effortless style” to “I love you” felt very authentic to me, but maybe I’m projecting.
The relationship with Nova is certainly more expected. Anyone who has read any YA fantasy knows that if you land yourself on a quest with a handsome bad boy, there’s gonna be some sexual tension. I think that the intense familiarity with this trope made it feel more familiar and thus real to some readers. Again, this makes sense to me. Most 16-year-old girls are given a script for how they should feel around teenage boys and how to describe those feelings. When it comes to navigating your feelings for other women, you’re kind of on your own. That can be incredibly freeing, but also a little confusing.
All of this is to say that there are folks who complained about how differently the two romances unfolded and wanted the relationship with Rishi to feel more developed. I think that would have also been a compelling story, but there was something really honest and sweet about the slight awkwardness of their relationship.
I don’t want anyone to think that by awkward I mean Alex was filled with self-doubt and spent 100+ pages wrestling with the demons of her sexuality. Everyone was pretty unconcerned that Alex and Rishi finally realized/admitted that they have a thing for each other. There wasn’t a huge drama around coming out, which made sense with all the other life-or-death happening in the plot. Being an elder-millennial, I still do a little happy dance whenever a character is just bi and it isn’t a huge production. It still pleasantly surprises me when characters get to just be bi, and I’m to say that it’s happening more and more often. I never found my own sexuality especially confusing or exotic, and so it was weird to see the media constantly depicting it that way. If anything, that made the whole thing so much more confusing.
Córdova did a really good job making it clear that Alex was attracted to both Nova and Rishi and, in fact, cared deeply for both of them. This didn’t make her indecisive or incapable of choosing or immoral, it just made her bi. Her attractions were never portrayed as a phase or experimentation. The author and other characters all took Alex’s feelings at face value, and that was marvelous.
If you’re looking for a fun bi YA read with lots of magic, a diverse cast, and two more books already published, look no further! Labyrinth Lost is the book for you.