Review: Children of Blood and Bone by Toni Adeyemi

Published March 6th 2018 by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers

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.

My Review

“I teach you to be warriors in the garden so you will never be gardeners in the war.” 

What?! What does that even mean? This was such a disappointing read. I'd been steering clear of YA fantasy for a while because I was fed up with the excessively tropey, unoriginal books masquerading as the next best thing in YA. So, I picked up Children of Blood and Bone with no small amount of trepidation, even after all the glowing reviews that it got from trusted reviewers. 

However, it turned out to be an incredibly cliched, surprisingly slow paced, dud of a book. Evil prince who switches sides after falling for the oddball destined to save the world? Check. Meek little best friend who eventually transforms into a badass? Check. Insta-love that blossomed in a span of hours and came in the way of the greater good? Check. Gaahh.. the only thing missing was an unnecessary love triangle and this would've been every other YA fantasy in a 500 page nutshell!

The book started out slow and just got slower. I determinedly slogged through the first 200 pages, thinking that maybe it's just a slow burn that would eventually build up into something interesting, but boy was it a downer! I couldn't care about any of the characters either. The book is told from the perspective of Zélie (the dull-as-a-Fourier-Transform protagonist), Amari (the scaredy little rogue princess) and Inan (the incredibly annoying crown prince). None of these characters managed to capture my interest or made me feel anything except scorn at the way they acted throughout the book. Some of the things that they did made zilch sense (hint: partying out in the open without cause for celebration with the enemy at their heels? Ugh. Dumb). The only person who actually had a stable head on his shoulders was Zélie's brother Tzain, and even he was as uninteresting as a sack of hay.

The world building was shoddy at best and there was no proper explanation as to how magic or the Gods' will worked. The racial discrimination and violence at the hands of a cruel, tyrannical King may have been intended to throw some light on racial discrimination in Nigeria, but it fell flat and evoked no real sympathy or dread from me. The book was peppered with random events that made little to no sense and just made me more aggravated at the book's length. 

Overall, a highly disappointing way to kick off the new year. This makes me so much warier of the entire YA fantasy genre now. It'll be a while before I'll be able to trust the hype again.

Rating: 2/5 stars!