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Children of Virtue and Vengeance (Legacy of Orïsha, #2)

Tomi Adeyemi

Start date: July 1, 2019

Finish date: July 30, 2019

Discussion: Author's Pick

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Feb 10, 2020 Christina rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy, books-i-would-read-over-and-over, young-adult, fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Another cliffhanger??? I don't know how much my heart can take!!

Tomi Adeyemi knows how to get you riled up. I was so in all of my emotions with this book. The first installment of this trilogy had me hating Inan. I still hate Inan! The whole royal family could just jump off a ledge for all I care. They got on my nerves in this book!

For me, this book was fast paced. I was able to meld right in with the story as it picked up momentum into the war battling against the monarch in the Orisha kingdo Another cliffhanger??? I don't know how much my heart can take!!

Tomi Adeyemi knows how to get you riled up. I was so in all of my emotions with this book. The first installment of this trilogy had me hating Inan. I still hate Inan! The whole royal family could just jump off a ledge for all I care. They got on my nerves in this book!

For me, this book was fast paced. I was able to meld right in with the story as it picked up momentum into the war battling against the monarch in the Orisha kingdom and rebellious army of the Iyika. We got introduced to some new characters, and was able to fall back in love with the characters from the first book. One new character from the end of the first book, Röen, was such a sexy mystery! I came to love him and Zéli's oft-unstable connection throughout this book.

In this installment, Zéli, Amari, and Tzain are living life after magic has been brought back to life. Inan, the crown prince, is now the heir to the throne, and is adamant at seeing magic get destroyed once and for all. His mother, Nehanda, is hellbent on seeing her son on the throne and taking out whoever gets in the way. She is demonically possessed with power, and does everything in and out of her might to ensure the maji does not return to power or to usurp the throne. We learn some secrets that Nehanda has kept, and we find out her real motivation behind getting Inan into the seat of power.

Zéli, the ever faithful maji to her clan, is now one of the leaders and elders in her maji clan of Reapers. Although she was hesitant and reluctant at first, she takes full command of her clan to ensure that justice is served to the royals who have oppressed the maji since forever. We see how she deals with Inan, Amari, Röen, and the war as battles ensues. Will the war to bring peace to Orïsha never end?

Inan. The crown prince is fighting to be the kind of king Orïsha never had. With his dead father's legacy pushing behind him, and his mother pushing him from in front, Inan has enormous pressure to continue being the type of ruler like his father. However, because of the connection with Zéli and the maji, he's wants to do the right thing for his kingdom. Will Inan fall to the pressures of being like his father? Or will he stand up and become the king he know he needs to be for Orïsha to have the peace they have been seeking?

Amari, the little princess, has now become a tîtan, like many of the royals and nobles in the land, now that magic is back. Amari wants to become the queen of Orïsha because she feels, only she can make the difference that is needed to bring peace to the land. However, she's her mother's and father's child. Amari knows that in order for her to be queen, she's going to have to make sacrifices. She has to beat her mother in order for her to rise to the throne. Will she sacrifice everyone she loves just to be queen?

This book brings to the surface many issues. How do you wield power to get the right things accomplished without sacrificing the ones you love just to get things accomplished? How can you set aside your differences and work with others to get things done? How do you know you have matured in order to see things from an objective angle without getting too involved? How can you bring 2 factions together who disagree in order to bring about peace?

I really enjoyed this book! I still have questions though that I hope to have explained in the third and final book. Overall, this book was a thrilling wild ride. There is long discussions about the war and preparation for war, but I enjoyed the pace of the book and it did not seem clunky at all to discuss the war throughout this book. I would recommend this book to everyone! Very good book for YA fiction, and it kept me on the seat of my pants throughout. ...more

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Jan 02, 2020 Nikki rated it really liked it

Shelves: i-m-a-cover-whore, racial-ethnic-diversity, wishlist, holy-crap, own-voices

WTF WAS THAT ENDING?! Review to come

**EDIT 5/30/20**

After reading the first book in 2018, I didn’t really remember what happened. Thankfully I had my review and Recaptains to help with my memory. Once I read through those, I was completely ready to read this story….. Or so I thought. Here’s to another year of waiting with another cliffhanger -__-

Magic is back, but at what cost? Magic has now reached the maji, but also the monarchy and more. And in their hands, it’s nowhere near safe. As Amari WTF WAS THAT ENDING?! Review to come

**EDIT 5/30/20**

After reading the first book in 2018, I didn’t really remember what happened. Thankfully I had my review and Recaptains to help with my memory. Once I read through those, I was completely ready to read this story….. Or so I thought. Here’s to another year of waiting with another cliffhanger -__-

Magic is back, but at what cost? Magic has now reached the maji, but also the monarchy and more. And in their hands, it’s nowhere near safe. As Amari and Zélie work to try uniting the monarchy and the maji, secrets are revealed left and right. It’s not long before a civil war begins. Can they stop it or is Orïsha destined to fall apart?

Starting with the writing style, I had some issues with this… It wasn’t like the first one where everything had me on the edge of my seat and it furthered the plot towards the next book. This one wasn’t like that. It still had me on edge, but I don’t feel like it furthered anything. It felt like the dreaded sophomore novel. Being honest, it was repetitive. There were only so many times you can think something will go one way, they trick you, and then you start all over again before the reader is able to predict it. And that’s exactly what happened. By the last two times I knew what was coming and I didn’t need to read it to find out.

Nothing changed about the way she writes though. I was still completely enamored in the world of Orïsha. And her way of describing their fights had me biting my nails. I wish I could see their magic in action with all the colorful ashe and how they glow! The world Adeyemi made is way past cool! But this time she made the characters insufferable. There were wayyyy too many cooks in the kitchen and everyone had thier own idea of how things were supposed to be going and no one worked together. That’s why the same thing kept happening, nothing ever got accomplished.

I also didn’t care for the ending. After the build up for this war throughout the entire story, the ending was like 10 pages over different POVs. But none of them really had a fight scene. There was one and it lasted a few paragraphs. It’s safe to say I wanted MORE. The first book was like 600+ pages, so why did this one have to seem so rushed? And that HELLO, CAN WE TALK ABOUT THAT EPILOGUE?! Man WTF was that?! I have to wait another year to find out what happens? How do you expect me to survive that Tomi? After the first book I remember saying I have so many questions, and the same is true for this one too!

To me, book two doesn’t hold a candle to the first one, but I did still really enjoy this one. I can’t wait to get my hands on the third one. With an epilogue like this one, there’s no way that one can be anything other than epic!
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