Jennifer deBie at Reedsy Discovery praises Rags and Muffin:
Broadly speaking, in western literature authors tend to populate their novels with characters the age of their intended audience. A novel full of teenagers going on adventures is meant for the YA market. A chapter-book full of pre-teens is aimed at middle grade readers. A novel full of women in their 30s and 40s is largely geared towards women in their 30s and 40s, and any readers from outside that demographic who buy and enjoy the book are a nice bonus for the author, publisher, and bookseller.
This is a book almost entirely populated by children, but please do not give it to children. These are child soldiers fighting a graphic war in a city waiting to swallow, exploit, and destroy all of the children it can sink teeth into.
This is not a book for children, or the faint of heart.
That said, D. G. D. Davidson’s Rags and Muffin, the first entry in his Deus ex Magical Girl series, is a complex sequence of interlinking narratives, following various members of the titular Rags’ gang as they go through a particularly perilous few days. While the kids’ adventures unfold, Davidson takes readers through a whirlwind tour of Godtown itself and the complex native religion, centered almost entirely on maintaining caste and worshiping powerful girls born from the union of a human and the native marjara, a race of cat people. These daughters, or hybrids, the only viable offspring from such couplings as far as we are told, are born with an innate connection to the Goddess and thus her power and are destined by their genetics to die before they reach adulthood, preferably after spending the majority of their short lives being worshiped in a temple as an incarnation of their Goddess on earth.
Rags, the Ragamuffin to her enemies and Miss Anne to adults, along with her gang of child-disciples, is on a mission to save her fellow hybrids from those who would exploit or enslave them for their power through a combination of acrobatic hand-to-hand combat and heavy artillery. This never-ending battle for the soul of Godtown is further complicated by the soldiers of the occupying Elysian Empire, would-be colonizers who enforce their laws with war machines called runebots, and an iron fist.
If all of that sounds complicated and potentially violent, the answers are yes, and very.
Luckily, Davidson is an able storyteller with a knack for describing his chosen world and crafting his characters. Sights, smells, and sounds are brought to life with startling clarity, as are every bruise, broken bone, and bleeding wound the children experience. The children themselves are drawn with unerring precision, each characterized by their own linguistic quirks and subconscious drives. This is an author with a true talent for bringing his work to life, even if the results are potentially jarring to an audience accustomed to western narratives, novels, and tropes.
However, readers with experience in eastern media, particularly manga and anime from Japan, will notice a more than passing resemblance between Rags and Muffin and several franchises from that quarter. Most notably certain “girls with guns” properties, like Shikabane Hime and Black Lagoon, as well as dark fantasy/urban fantasy series like Soul Eater/Soul Eater Not, Dance in the Vampire Bund, and Blood-C.
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