Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, a timely story about standing up to those who want to keep you down

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
Published by Henry Holt and Company (BYR) ISBN: 9781250170989
on March 6, 2018
Genres: Fantasy, Social Themes, Prejudice & Racism
Pages: 448
Read it as: Hardcover
Source: Purchased
My rating:
Check it out in Goodreads
Synopsis

They killed my mother.They took our magic.They tried to bury us.

Now we rise.

Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls.

But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.

Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.

Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers and her growing feelings for an enemy.

It’s absurd how long it took me to read this book! Almost two full months. Like I’ve mentioned in previous posts, it wasn’t because I didn’t like it or it was boring. In fact, once I found some pockets of time these last two weeks, it was so easy to make progress with it. So the first thing I can say about this book is to not to be daunted by the number of pages, because there’s always something happening, and that helps the reader move along pretty quickly.

First, let’s get the obvious out of the way.

 

This is relevant in this day and age

Children of Blood and Bone is plainly and unapologetically showing us a situation that we are either living or seeing in our real world. The author tells a tale of opression, violence, and the quest of a people to fight for their identity. It has so much cultural value in our society, which is why it doesn’t surprise that it’s getting so much attention. We need this story, and stories like THUG (which I also need to read soon), because they don’t beat around the bush. They don’t make reference to ‘Black Lives Matter’, or to racism, or any of those things. They are that. It’s their essence.

There will certainly be people that will whine about the blackness, the political and social agenda, and blah blah blah. But I’ve got only one thing to say about that. We, as a community, need these stories.

 

Another book about oppression/royalty/rebellion?

Yes, of course it is. This book reminds me a little of Ash Princess, Red Queen, and others that deal with an oppressive government or rulers in general. But it’s also clearly something entirely different. And it’s all about the context.

Most stories about royalty and rebellion are pretty awesome and certainly uplifting. I enjoy this kind of stories because they always take me back to the issue of bullying. These stories for me are just a case of large scale bullying. My own experience with bullying was pretty emotionally taxing for me, and I didn’t handle it well, so these stories over the years have empowered me and allowed me to move on with my life and try to do my own acts of rebellion by just being better.

Now, Children of Blood and Bone is not that story.

It’s certainly relatable, to a point. But this story goes beyond just bullying. Like I said before, it’s a clear criticism of the oppresion of people of color.

 

Now, on to the story itself.

 

It’s entertaining and very well-structured

Apart from the cultural implications it has, my writer brain couldn’t help but notice how well-paced and structured it is. It’s true, I took my sweet time reading this book, but it was not its fault. Like I also said, there’s always something happening. The characters always have a goal. There were no moments in which I had to skip pages, or even paragraphs to get to the story, because the author made sure everything that is written serves a purpose.

 

The POV characters are perfect choices

As POV characters we have Zélie, who has the potential be a maji with powers and all that jazz; Amari, the princess, daughter to Orisha’s opressor and current king; and then there’s Inan, the heir to the throne. Their arcs compliment each other quite nicely because they offer us different perspectives on the same conflict. Zélie who has lived on the bad side of the king’s ‘righteous’ cause, Amari who has been living the good life but also had a diviner best friend, and Inan, who tries to be the perfect prince but has some secrets of his own.\

It’s just one book but I feel like this characters grew so much more in one book than the average YA character does throughout a whole series.

 

 

It doesn’t preach, but it shows

In spite of having a firm stance on the theme of the story, the book also plays with other moral spectrums. And here’s where the characters and their motivations come into play. Inan really surprised me for example. His father has been sort of his role model, so he feels he’s doing the right thing, defending Orisha against magic. Magic is bad. People with magic, that are more powerful than others are dangerous. What if they suddenly decide they don’t want to be good, that they want to take over (much like the king himself did)? These are actually valid questions.

As I understood it, the beliefs behind the magic in Orisha are linked to their gods, and to the idea that maji should help people and are meant to be forces of good. If this belief is strongly ingrained in all maji, then nobody should be worried. But clearly non-majis don’t get this, or don’t want to believe it. So how to convince them?

There’s also the fact that even if there is a possibility of maji going rogue and wanting more power, this is no excuse to enslave and opress an entire group of people.

So, as you can see, at least for the characters, there are so many things to consider.

I hope we can see more of this in the other books. Like, will all these years of oppression cause some maji to harbor such hatred that they will ignore their deities’ teachings? How much of that hatred is justified and righteous? How the author solves this questions could have great cultural impact too.

But she understands her own culture, and based on this book, I think she knows exactly what she’s doing and that she’s going to keep surprising us and giving us great stories!

 

Have you read this one yet? Talking about POVs, do you prefer only one or multiple?

 

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