At first reduced to living with other homeless castaways on the Sankharan beaches, Francine is recruited by members of a so-called cult of love, who put a roof over her head and set her to work handing out religious pamphlets. There she catches the eye of a Machiavellian elf, who in turn maneuvers her into the path of the gorgeous and enigmatic Jalaeka. The two bond instantly, despite the disapproval of the cultists, who—ironically—see romantic love as a barrier to true enlightenment.

Jalaeka is like nobody Francine has ever known. The lone survivor of a mysterious catastrophe that wiped out 1.8 million people in a realm called Metropolis, he is master of a peculiar castle located in the Sankhara slums, and also possesses a remarkable ability to relieve a person's emotional burdens. As Jalaeka and Francine fall ever more deeply in love, however, she sees glimpses of a centuries-long past—one where her gorgeous new boyfriend's earlier lovers all came to tragic ends.

Romance, wonder and genuine edge

Justina Robson's Living Next Door to the God of Love is a hip and inventive look at myths, power and the nature of romantic love. Set in a universe where superheroes, crime-fighting androids and elves are features of the everyday landscape and humanity must navigate a tricky diplomatic relationship with a godlike entity known as the Unity, it offers a morally complex backdrop for a difficult love story. The intricacies of this universe can be tricky to parse out: Though readers can always tell what is happening to Jalaeka and Francine, it is periodically challenging to sort out why—to fully understand how the undeniably nifty forces in play in her universe relate to one another.

That said, Robson's prose has a crisp poetry that makes this novel a pleasure to read, while her characters—particularly her villains—are exquisitely well developed. If Living Next Door to the God of Love suffers at times from the weaknesses endemic to books whose merely mortal protagonists are caught in the sweep of events beyond their comprehension—novels of Lovecraftian scope and sensibility, lacking only the pulpy horror overtones—it also offers more clarity than most of its peers, along with a vast array of brain candy that will distract most readers from its flaws.

The authorial imagination showcased in this book is fertile and dense, effortlessly generating moments of wonder and unspeakable savagery with every turn of the page. Robson opens with a vivid portrait of the pocket dimension Metropolis—a place worthy of novel-length exploration in its own right—only to casually snuff it out and take the story somewhere even stranger. Beneath the razzle-dazzle, though, Living Next Door to the God of Love steadfastly lives up to all the promises it makes, keeping the reader fully plugged in to its often bizarre narrative, right to the very last paragraph.