Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi

Book Addict Reviews

I love me some fantasy novels, but I am willing to admit that for the most part, the stories I’ve been drawn to in the past have very definitely been from the same basic British-high-fantasy mold. Lots of elves and knights and magicians and fairies.

What I only recently came to realize was just how much adventure and wonder I was missing by not searching out diverse fantasy! Other than Melinda Lo and her excellent books Ash and Huntress, I hadn’t encountered much in the way of diverse voices in fantasy (I don’t count Octavia Butler, since she’s sci-fi, and unlike most bookstores, I choose to recognize those genres separately). I tried a Nnedi Okorafor novel, Who Fears Death, but I’m not gonna lie, I couldn’t get into it (please don’t send hate mail; I was sort of in a reading slump at the time). At any rate, when I saw Children of Blood and Bone on a bunch of YA reading lists, I was excited to give it a go.

Zelie will never forget the day that magic disappeared from Orisha. It’s the same day that the king, jealous of the powers of the magical race the maji, ordered the slaughter of all adult maji in the country. Since then, she and her remaining family have been eking out a living in a small fishing village. Zelie, like her mother, is a diviner. If magic still existed in Orisha, she would one day gain the magical powers that would make her a maji. However, since magic disappeared, the diviners have been under constant threat from the king and his guards, and Zelie and her family live in constant fear that the guards will finish the genocide that was started on the night Zelie’s mother was killed.

Amari is the king’s daughter, and from an early age has been taught that the diviners are evil and dangerous. Along with her brother, Inan, she has been forced by her fathe