A writing professor once told me that when you find yourself devouring a book, you need to read it twice, back-to-back—the first time for the pleasure of getting immersed in the story, and the second for the business of understanding why you felt that way. Since getting that advice, I’ve only done this twice, most recently while reading Tomi Adeyemi’s tremendous debut, Children of Blood and Bone. I’ve been following the novel since news broke about Adeyemi’s momentous sales of the upcoming trilogy and film rights for the first book, so when offered the opportunity to review it, I practically leapt at the chance. And guys, make no mistake, Children of Blood and Bone is beyond deserving of its hype—and this coming from me, someone who considers Gossip Girl the height of fantasy.
Children of Blood and Bone opens eleven years after the disappearance of magic and the massacre of the maji, a community of a dark-skinned, white-haired people with special abilities. When a chance encounter draws Zélie and rebellious princess Amari together, the pair, along with Zélie’s older brother, set off on an odyssey to restore magic and return the Kingdom of Orïsha to its former glory. Rotating between the perspectives of Zélie, our maji heroine, Amari, and crown prince Inan, the novel quickly rachects up to a breakneck pace as we get acquainted with Zélie’s world.
With expansive cinematic description and unique turns of phrase, Adeyemi’s world-building is masterful and genuinely epic. Taking place in an afrofuturist rendering of Nigeria (Yoruba mythology and Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion feature heavily throughout), Children of Blood of Bone’s storytelling is comparable to that of that other YA juggernaut about magic—except perhaps better, because there’s no expectation that we have a baseline familiarity with this world the way most readers will with European history. With each sentence, there is the unignorable suggestion that Adeyemi has a deep, abiding understanding of the universe she’s created—far beyond what shows up in the page. It’s this sense of depth, coupled with methodological character development, that makes Children of Blood and Bone such an engrossing read.
Beyond the thrill of reading dynamic, cogent, simply good writing, there’s a distinct joy that comes from reading a Black-centered story, an African-centered story, in a genre that remains overwhelmingly white. There’s a pleasure that comes from getting to see Zélie be vulnerable in her world, when we are living in a world that often denies Black women that right. Marrying timely race-based allegory to an engaging narrative, Children of Blood and Bone is a must-read for sure.
Children of Blood and Bone is set for release on March 6th. Read an excerpt and pre-order here.
