Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Title: Children of Blood and Bone

Author: Tomi Adeyemi

Release Date: March 6, 2018

I received an ARC of this book through the library I work at.  I was really excited to read this one.  The cover is beautiful, and the story is just as lovely.  What can I say without spoiling it?

This book is about a girl who lives in a world that used to have magic, but the magic has died.  The king saw to that eleven years ago, killing the magic and the adults who once had it.  The girl, Zelie watched them take her mother, beat her father, and she has worked to never lose another family member.  Now there is a spark, a hope that magic may return.  A rogue princess that escapes the castle and brings that hope.  But there is also a prince who threatens that hope, and their father, the king, will see to the final death of magic if he has anything to say about it.

There is so much more to this book than just magic.

There is the world it takes place in.  I read that the world is built on a fictional Nigeria. Some of the place names are real places in Nigeria.  The people are true to those places, with dark skin, though those that have the potential to wield magic have white hair.

There are also exciting fight scenes, powerful women and men, wielding magic, swords, and staves.

The language is beautiful.  Though I could not understand the incantations, which I believe where in Yoruba, I loved that it was mixed in.  I am thinking about listening to the audio when it is released just to hear the pronunciations of the language and the names.

There are prejudices against the maji, those who have magic, and the diviners, those who have the potential to have magic.  They are seen as scum of the earth types.  They are treated poorly, taxed, and not allowed to date/marry the kosidan, or warriors.

There is a strong sense of family, between Zelie, her brother, and their father. The princess, Amari, and her brother, Inan, care about each other, even if their father has trained them to have a sense of duty before everything else.  Family is an important element to the story.

What's a YA book without romance?  That's the way it seems to be these days.  And so I expected the romances that were built in this novel, but they were done well and they weren't the main focus of the story.

I only found a few faults with the book, minor things.  There were a couple of wording issues.  There was one moment when one of the characters called out "Guys" to the other characters, and it pulled me out of the narrative, away from the fantasy feel and the way that they had been talking.  It felt too modern and non-fantasy.  Also, the names of the animals felt weird at first.  The cat creatures they ride are larger, horned versions of the panthers and lions that we have in our world, and they are called panthonaires and lionaires.  I initially felt like the names could have been more creative, but then it would have taken more time to explain the similarities.  After a bit, it was easy to ignore and didn't take away from the story.  Like I said, both of these were minor issues in an otherwise great book.

I thought this was a beautifully told, exciting novel, and I can't wait for the next book!