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Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha, #1)

Tomi Adeyemi

Finish date: October 11, 2018

Discussion: Buddy Reads

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What Members Thought

Jul 30, 2019 storytime-reviews rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-sci-fi, young-and-new-adult

Children of Blood and Bone works precisely because it has the combination of a thrilling plot and interesting characters. Initially, the reader is dropped straight into a world that doesn’t make complete sense, yet both the plot and characters allow for rich world-building – slowly but surely more information comes your way. I personally prefer this method of world-building, rather than getting it in large chunks at the beginning, or through heavy exposition.

The idea of a small group of people Children of Blood and Bone works precisely because it has the combination of a thrilling plot and interesting characters. Initially, the reader is dropped straight into a world that doesn’t make complete sense, yet both the plot and characters allow for rich world-building – slowly but surely more information comes your way. I personally prefer this method of world-building, rather than getting it in large chunks at the beginning, or through heavy exposition.

The idea of a small group of people journeying to bring magic to a land in which it has been destroyed, was already a good one. But make those people a girl with magic and her non-magic brother (Zélie and Tzain), and the prince and princess of the monarchy that oppresses magic (Inan and Amari), and you have a really fascinating cast of characters because there is so much inter-personal dynamic to explore. Perhaps the most enjoyable moments of Children of Blood and Bone were the ways in which these vastly different characters interacted, and how these interactions changed over time. Whilst Inan and Amari live a very privileged life compared to the others, they lack the parental love that Zélie and Tzain have. Yet, they manage to not only find some common ground, but also a commonality of ideas about oppression and the future of Orisha.

This is especially reminiscent in the developing relationship between the two girls, who have come to appreciate each other’s values and attributes. The real love story of Children of Blood and Bone is the love and understanding between Zélie and Amari. They have come a long way from the unlikely and unfriendly allies that they were in the beginning – Zélie in particular took a long time to warm up to Amari when her brother liked her pretty much instantly.

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Jun 14, 2019 Aubrey (janethebookworm) rated it did not like it

This book represents nearly everything I hate about the YA genre. Insta love, inconsistent characters, an unreliable and undefined magic system with some sort of underlying political message to boot all combine into something overhyped and ultra-annoying.

First of all the few positives about this book...

Positives: The representation of African culture in a fantasy world is nice, but it seems like a slap in the face to all of that since the book is so bad. I assume the language and cultural repre This book represents nearly everything I hate about the YA genre. Insta love, inconsistent characters, an unreliable and undefined magic system with some sort of underlying political message to boot all combine into something overhyped and ultra-annoying.

First of all the few positives about this book...

Positives: The representation of African culture in a fantasy world is nice, but it seems like a slap in the face to all of that since the book is so bad. I assume the language and cultural representation is on point since the author is Nigerian.?.
I guess I enjoyed that Zelie really cared about her family throughout the book instead of abandoning them as soon as she saw a hot boy like in much if YA fantasy, but that seems like a low bar to set.
The design of the book was beautiful, so props for good marketing!?!

Characters: Zelie's character made a complete 180 from "I will do anything to protect my family and people, get revenge, kill the royalty, etc..." even to the point of recklessness into "Oh...I'm not ready for this mission to SAVE MY PEOPLE! It's too much RESPONSIBILITY!!" All this girl ever wanted was to avenge her mother, but she's gonna abandon her only chance to this for NO PARTICULAR REASON AT ALL!!!
Inan would go through an intense thought process and make a decision that SEEMED IMPORTANT. Then in the next scene, he would do the COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF THAT!!!!

Amari fluctuated between being bland to being weirdly unbelievable and insanely talented with basically everything but useless in most situations.

Message: I'm perfectly fine with a book having a political message and it's not even that I disagreed with the message in this book. The fact is that the message MADE NO SENSE. It would say one thing and then another. First, it's wrong for the royalty to have taken over and we should hate them, then we're supposed to feel bad for them because of some mildly confusing flashbacks.

Writing: There is not much to say about the writing beyond the fact that it was boring and predictable most of the time and infuriating at other times. The author would use the same tired phrases REPEATEDLY within the span of a couple of chapters.

Magic System: The magic system had no rules at all which would have been fine, except the author made it seem as if there were going to solid boundaries for this magic but NO... Zelie can just suddenly wield powerful magic cause her Dad died???? People who aren't diviners become them??? It was unoriginal and lazy.

Overall it was and continues to be, over-hyped.

That is all.
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Feb 11, 2019 ipek rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult, series, fantasy, 2019, black-voices

*4.5

Just finished reading this masterpiece of a book and I loved it! In case you didn't know, this is about a quest to bring magic back to a land where it doesn't exist anymore.
I'd heard so many great things about it and I was not disappointed. I loved certain characters so much, and the author did a very good job of making me sympathize with each character in turn. I loved the author's note and I loved the last words in the book. I am highly anticipating the sequel, Children of Virtue and Ve ...more

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