Although it follows the beats of typical quest novel, I really enjoyed reading Children of Blood and Bone. The story is set in the country of Orïsha and told from the POVs of 3 characters, but the one who gets the most attention is Zélie. Her maji mother was killed when Zélie was a child after King Saran decided to eliminate magic from the land. Saran now oppresses people known as divîners, meaning they would have eventually become maji if he hadn’t ended magic. One day Zélie comes across an artifact that awakens her maji blood, and she sets off on a quest with her brother Tzain and Saran’s daughter Amari, with the goal of bringing back magic to all of Orïsha.
The other two POVs in the novel are Amari and her brother Inan. While I liked Zélie’s sections, I particularly enjoyed Amari’s because she’s the character who seems to grow the most over the course of the novel. Inan’s development is more complex and his decisions wishy-washy, and Zélie’s impulsivity doesn’t change much, though this character flaw is important to the novel. One thing that I liked about all of the characters is that they really do feel like they fit into a YA fantasy. So often, YA fantasies don’t feel YA (e.g., Six of Crows) because the characters act like adults. While I kind of like this as an older reader, it doesn’t feel realistic. The characters in Children of Blood and Bone are thrust into adult situations but often respond with the emotional reactions of teenagers. This was particularly apparent with Inan, who at times had very naive views about how to fix the world.
What I didn’t like as much were some inconsistencies around timing. The characters would talk about how little time there was to complete the quest, but when it was convenient to the narrative, that didn’t seem to matter. This was especially egregious at the end, where the villains use something as leverage against the heroes and there was just no possible way they could have obtained this source of leverage in the amount of time they had. It stretched believability and detracted from the story. There’s also some insta love between a couple of characters, which is one of my least favorite tropes and sometimes takes me out of the story because I just don’t buy it.
The novel was engaging. I never felt like it dragged, and I really enjoyed the African-inspired world that Adeyemi created. While it had some flaws and the very end could have used some tightening, it left me wanting more and I plan to read the sequels in the near future.
