My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Some authors are able to catch lightening in a bottle with the first novel in a planned series. Tomi Adeyemi did just that with here incredible, fast-paced YA fantasy Children of Blood and Bone. However, it is very difficult to sustain that same momentum into the sequel. So has she done it? I would emphatically say yes! Ms. Adeyemi picks up the baton where she left it off and gives us another incredible and fast-paced YA fantasy adventure that should please those who fell in with the first novel.
Set just a few weeks after the end of the previous novel, this book follows the same four characters as before: Zelie, the fierce village maji who brought magic back to Orïsha; Tzain, Zelie’s older brother; Amari, the runaway princess looking to take control and rule as a better monarch than her father; and Inan, the prince who ascends to the throne after his father’s death. Zelie, her brother Tzain, and Amari have successfully brought magic back to the land, but because the ceremony was bungled now both the maji and supporters of the monarchy with magical ancestry have powers too. This plunges all of Orïsha into a brutal civil war and threatens their morals, friendships, and lives. The result is absolute dynamite!
Just as before, Ms. Adeyemi writes at an incredibly brisk pace. Even some of the down moments where little action is happening feel rather fast. What is different though is that, with magic now flooding Orïsha, Zelie is not the only person with magical powers. Though there were not enough of these moments, I really enjoyed seeing Zelie and her other maji users test their abilities. I also enjoyed the absolute raw emotions that all of our main characters are dealing with. Every single one of them has already lost a low before the events of this book, and how they react to those loses and to each other is great. This could’ve easily devolved into teen melodrama, but Ms. Adeyemi handles her characters and their motivations very well.
I only have two small gripes about this book. The first is how quickly characters move from one location to the next. While I didn’t quite catch how distant some of these locations are from each other, based on the map provided in the front and back of the book, it feels like her characters get teleportated around the map a lot. It might have added some pages, but a chapter here and there with characters transiting between one location and the next would’ve allowed for some quieter character-building moments and wouldn’t have felt like characters were traversing the land so quickly. Another small gripe I have is the ending. Just like in the first book, Ms. Adeyemi ends the book with a heck of a cliffhanger. Unlike the first book though, this book’s cliffhanger feels like it came straight out left field and, quite honestly, a bit like a deus ex machina to keep a few of the main characters alive. This is both exciting as I can’t wait to see what happens next, but also a little frustrating as I am once again left scratching my head as to what exactly happened. That said, these are both very small gripes and they aren’t enough to keep me from giving this book a full five stars.
Pulse pounding action, magic, raw emotions, moral ambiguity. Ms. Adeyemi imbues this fantasy world with more than magic, but with real stakes for all of the characters involved. If you loved the first book, you will love the next one too.
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