Divine Rivals is a novel published in 2023 by Rebecca Ross. It is one of those books that is difficult to accurately summarize because so much depends on the precise knowledge of the world the author has created for her characters. On the surface, it is a love story between two young war journalists. That tale of Iris Winnow and Roman Kitt is of limited scope, however, without understanding how Underling and Skyward gods have been warring with each other until only a handful were left. This disadvantage led to an opportunity for humans to capture them and place the gods into suspended animation. It is in the connection of these two stories that seem to belong to two separate books that Ross spins her saga which is scheduled to continue with at least one sequel. The connectivity of the disparate plots is located in the awakening of the Underling god Dacre and the Skyward god Enva upon whom he is sworn to seek revenge.
The war that the two young protagonists are reporting on is that very conflict. They first chance upon the existence of each other by accidentally becoming pen pals before realizing the actual identity of the other. Soon enough, the two pen pals are competing for the same coveted position as a newspaper columnist. As might be expected, this relationship twists along a crooked path toward romance before the resolution which—as the promise of a sequel intimates—ends with potentially tragic separation setting up the framework for a story of reconciliation in the next volume.
The idea of building a world simply to tell a story of young love among reporters during the war may seem sheer gimmickry at worst an opportunity for padding at best, but beneath the unlikely collision can be found at least one thematic explanation. Journalism stories often afford opportunities to examine ideas related to heroic quests for the truth. One of the underlying elements of dramatic conflict in the story is that the newspaper for which Iris works ironically violates its very own name. The Oath Gazette engages in acts of reportorial censorship designed to keep some ugly truths about the war from becoming public knowledge. Eventually, both young journalists find themselves reporting from the front line of the battlefield. In these ways and others, the story positions the journalists as human equivalents—on a much lesser scale—of mythic godlike figures. Although a romance story, Divine Rivals is also a celebration of journalism and a free press as a necessity for maintaining civilization.
