Synopsis:
Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zelie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls.But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were targeted and 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 the enemy.
Rating: 🌟🌟
This novel is important. We need more novels with poc characters,
we need more published own voices authors, we need more fantasy novels
that embrace other cultures and mythologies outside of the Medieval
European norm. Even if I didn't enjoy Children of Blood and Bone, I'm glad I preordered it and I'm so happy for it's success. The world needs this book.
However, outside of what it stands for, the novel itself lacks depth. The writing, the characters, the plot, and the world-building all feel superficial to some degree.
As a white person, I cannot speak to how well Yoruba culture and mythology is represented in this novel, and so I direct you to this review.
But what I can speak to is how immersive and successful the world-building is in convincing the reader of its pseudo-reality. I expect fantasies to feel lush and alive with history and culture, and sadly Adeyemi's world falls flat. The novel is littered with what I assume to be Yoruba words to describe objects and activities that don't have an English equivalent, but feel more like props than true features of the culture of Orïsha. They're left unexplored and unexplained, and don't feel properly incorporated to show how these objects and activities shape the inhabitants of this world. They feel indistinct and easily interchangeable with Western cultural activities.
The environments deviate from the typical temperate forests of fantasy - the characters visit jungles and deserts and islands - but are still filled with archetypal fishermen and merchants and the like. Instead of feeling grounded, the world feels vague and intangible, like a thin sheet of West African inspiration has been thrown over a stereotypical fantasy-lite YA work.
The plot is mostly recycled tropes. Because of how the novel is a response to racism and brutality toward poc in the U.S., I think that it was important to this book to use tropes and retell stories we love, but with poc characters as the heroes. I really think this could have worked and felt original if the world-building and writing had been stronger. But because the world-building is so thin, I couldn't help but sigh when the characters were chosen by the gods to fulfill a prophecy and bring magic back to the world. Sounds familiar, yeah?
Not to mention how the plot was repetitive. It settled into a formula of: get to place, meet important character, overcome a challenge/learn something new/gain something, king's soldiers attack, important character dies, feel like all hope as been crushed, escape to new place, rinse and repeat. This happened at least three or four times, and made it hard to care about new characters that died within 30-75 pages.
The characters feel more like caricatures than fully-realized characters. There are no subtleties in their emotions or opinions. If a character is angry, she's ANGRY. If she's sad, she's SAD. Every emotion or opinion is felt with such an extreme that shifting into a new emotion or opinion feels jarring and out-of-character. It happens so abruptly that it's as though someone snapped their fingers.
Insta-love. Two characters go from literally a battle to kill each other to trying to kiss each other within the span of 80-100 pages. I can't make this stuff up.
I feel like this review may make it seem otherwise, but I am genuinely glad that this book exists and hope that Tomi Adeyemi has a wildly successful career and writes tons of wildly successful books. I just don't think I'll be picking up the second book in her Legacy of Orïsha trilogy.
However, outside of what it stands for, the novel itself lacks depth. The writing, the characters, the plot, and the world-building all feel superficial to some degree.
As a white person, I cannot speak to how well Yoruba culture and mythology is represented in this novel, and so I direct you to this review.
But what I can speak to is how immersive and successful the world-building is in convincing the reader of its pseudo-reality. I expect fantasies to feel lush and alive with history and culture, and sadly Adeyemi's world falls flat. The novel is littered with what I assume to be Yoruba words to describe objects and activities that don't have an English equivalent, but feel more like props than true features of the culture of Orïsha. They're left unexplored and unexplained, and don't feel properly incorporated to show how these objects and activities shape the inhabitants of this world. They feel indistinct and easily interchangeable with Western cultural activities.
The environments deviate from the typical temperate forests of fantasy - the characters visit jungles and deserts and islands - but are still filled with archetypal fishermen and merchants and the like. Instead of feeling grounded, the world feels vague and intangible, like a thin sheet of West African inspiration has been thrown over a stereotypical fantasy-lite YA work.
The plot is mostly recycled tropes. Because of how the novel is a response to racism and brutality toward poc in the U.S., I think that it was important to this book to use tropes and retell stories we love, but with poc characters as the heroes. I really think this could have worked and felt original if the world-building and writing had been stronger. But because the world-building is so thin, I couldn't help but sigh when the characters were chosen by the gods to fulfill a prophecy and bring magic back to the world. Sounds familiar, yeah?
Not to mention how the plot was repetitive. It settled into a formula of: get to place, meet important character, overcome a challenge/learn something new/gain something, king's soldiers attack, important character dies, feel like all hope as been crushed, escape to new place, rinse and repeat. This happened at least three or four times, and made it hard to care about new characters that died within 30-75 pages.
The characters feel more like caricatures than fully-realized characters. There are no subtleties in their emotions or opinions. If a character is angry, she's ANGRY. If she's sad, she's SAD. Every emotion or opinion is felt with such an extreme that shifting into a new emotion or opinion feels jarring and out-of-character. It happens so abruptly that it's as though someone snapped their fingers.
Insta-love. Two characters go from literally a battle to kill each other to trying to kiss each other within the span of 80-100 pages. I can't make this stuff up.
I feel like this review may make it seem otherwise, but I am genuinely glad that this book exists and hope that Tomi Adeyemi has a wildly successful career and writes tons of wildly successful books. I just don't think I'll be picking up the second book in her Legacy of Orïsha trilogy.
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