Fires of the Faithful (Eliana's Song, #1)
by Naomi Kritzer
Pros: - gay - butch - the fastest I've read a fantasy novel in over a decade - interesting worldbuilding - gaaaaaaaay
Cons: - despite the window dressing, it's all Christians all the way down - still a sort of formulaic fantasy novel
What is up with that cover!! Eliana spends the first section of the book in shapeless gray robes and short hair, and most of the rest dressed like a dirty short-haired peasant Joan of Arc. There's multiple plot points where she's uncomfortable in or outright refuses to wear dresses.
So, despite some (creative, I grant) differences in festivals, goddess-worship, sexual morals, details of the stories, and etc, this is a lightly disguised version of early christians vs the catholic church in more-or-less Italy, plus some enviornmentalism. I don't know a lot about early christian history so I'm sure there are many things I'm missing, but I know enough Aramaic/Hebrew (it's probably Aramaic, I just don't know enough to confirm it's not Hebrew) to know that she's not working that hard to come up with her own stuff.
I have some very mixed feelings about christians using Aramaic/Hebrew for their religious purposes. On the one hand, sure, Jesus spoke Aramaic. On the other hand, your scripture is written in Greek! The christian religious use of Aramaic/Hebrew is always suspicious to me, strategically giving christianity a fake patina of age by tacking it onto jewish history/scripture/thought as the only natural continuation. When you're writing a story about your "Old Religion" being violently suppressed by institutional (Mary-worshipping, lol) catholicism, too.... eesh. Where'd you stash the Jews, polytheistic greco-roman pagans, etc. in this story?
On the upside, Eliana is not a capital-B believer and has a lot of questions and doubts about Redentore sexual and other morals. On the downside, I am never going to be a fan of a fantasy monotheism when you can "prove" a given religion is the correct one, as Lucia's story seems to do. I'm not sure if the story is just gonna let that stand or complicate how much of her conviction is confirmation bias.
Either way, I ordered the second one from an online used bookstore and I'm looking forward to reading it.