“You crushed us to build your monarchy on the backs of our blood and bone. Your mistake wasn’t keeping us alive. It was thinking we’d never fight back.”
CHILDREN OF BLOOD AND BONE, Tomi Adeyemi, 2018
Have you read CHILDREN OF BLOOD AND BONE yet? If not, why haven’t you read CHILDREN OF BLOOD AND BONE yet? It’s like a creative cocktail of STAR WARS and BLACK PANTHER and AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER, and also something magically unique unto itself. This novel is a glorious and powerful fantasy work.
Now, if you have the right sort of taste (as in you share my taste), then that description alone should have been all it took to send you scrambling to buy this novel and its sequel from your nearest indie bookstore, preferably a black-owned indie bookstore. But this wouldn’t be much of a blog post if I didn’t write more, so here we go.
THE STORY
Okay. There’s a lot of story here, and I don’t want to spoil too much of it. In the land of Orisha there used to be Maji, people who could wield magic given by the gods. Maji were divided into clans based on the type of magic they wielded (sorta like the nations in A:TLA, only there are lots more clans than nations). But the non-magic kosidán became afraid/jealous/greedy of the maji’s powers, beginning a long war that supposedly ended in a great slaughter of maji called The Raid, which coincided with the retreat of magic and the gods from Orisha. Those of maji blood still exist – and are irrevocably marked by their distinctive white hair – but they have no magic. Over the years the kosidán have become the ruling class and do a textbook job of keeping the maji oppressed to discourage rebellion: maji are referred to by the derogatory slur “maggot,” they are kept in low-wage positions, are punished with unfair taxes, and when they can’t pay those taxes they get forced down the prison pipeline into what is essentially slave labor.
Into this society appear magical artifacts that could restore the link between maji and the gods, thus restoring magic to the maji. A maji girl, Zélie, and her non-magical brother, Tzain, find themselves drawn into a plot to restore magic when Amari, daughter to the ruthless King of Orisha, steals one of the artifacts and runs away. Together the three of them race against time and geography to perform an important ritual needed to restore not just Zélie’s magic, but the magic of every oppressed maji in Orisha. All the while they’re pursued by Inan, Amari’s older brother, who turns out to have some magical abilities of his own. And oh, also Zélie becomes the literal embodiment of Black Girl Magic.
THE BABBLE
What can I say? If you’re looking to read an #OwnVoices book that touches on so many of the issues and emotions behind the Black Lives Matter movement – fear, police brutality, injustice, institutionalized oppression, colorism, proper allyship, economic inequality, and privilege – but also happens to be a damn good adventure fantasy story…this is the book for you. The characters fill archetypes, sure, but they’re also beautifully realized. You will love them by the end, and because Adeyemi writes in rotating first person narrative between three of the main characters, you will love all of them by the end.
Adeyemi walks this tightrope between achingly relevant social commentary and Star Wars-style adventure so expertly, too. At least to this reader’s eyes, YA novels that tackle big issues often tend to just have a character or narration boldly state a political viewpoint (or a straw man position) to save time and get all readers on the same page. Adeyemi never does that, but her point is just as clear. For example, the police brutality and corruption in this novel exist very much within the lived-in, detailed world of Orisha, and that detail makes the parallels to our world feel like a discovery rather than a lecture. Which makes that discovery even more of a punch in the gut. The same with the characters’ viewpoints: these are fully-fleshed characters, so trying on their views as they wrestle with the complex issues at play in a society built on prejudice doesn’t feel like reading a point-counterpoint summary. I know THE HATE U GIVE may always be considered the seminal YA work of the BLM movement, but I’ll be trying my hardest to get this fantasy novel into as many hands as possible as well. I think they both have the same goal, and there is definitely more than enough room for both and more (many more, can we please have more?), but Adeyemi has created the more complex work here.
Do I have any small quibbles? Of course, because I almost always do. Only quibble here is I felt like this novel may have been just as effective with one fewer back-stabbing betrayal, one fewer climax? It’s 544 pages long, after all, so I’d have been just as invested without as many fight scenes. But Adeyemi has written a blockbuster movie in novel form, and most blockbuster movies have a few too many fight scenes, and she knows how to write a fantastic and suspenseful fight scene, so this isn’t much of a complaint.
Read this novel. Just read it. Then give it to all your friends.
RATING
**** out of 4
RANDOM BABBLE
- No POV chapters for poor Tzain, which is too bad because Tzain’s a wonderful guy.
- The blackness of Orisha feels so celebratory, rather than feeling like exoticism. One of many reasons why we need to publish more POC authors. (In every genre, but especially in fantasy/sci fi.)
- Almost too many betrayals go with the almost too many will-they-won’t-they moments, and that’s all I’ll say about that (I’m more than halfway through the second book, CHILDREN OF VIRTUE AND VENGEANCE, and I can confidently say this issue stretches beyond the first book in the series).
- If Inan’s abilities don’t act as an argument for radical empathy being part of the solution to systematic racism, I don’t know what will. But I’m a theatre kid and book nerd, so of course I’d say that.
- That moment when Zélie screams, “I am always afraid!” Fuuuuuck.
- I don’t normally suggest audiobooks over physical books or vice versa, but if you have 17 hours to fill, I highly recommend the audiobook version of this one. Bahni Turpin’s reading is a phenomenal performance that gives new depth to the phrase Black Voices Matter.
Oh, and in case I didn’t make this clear in my review for The Parker Inheritance:
Bookshelves & Babble 