Review: Children of Blood and Bone

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Damn, this is brutal.

On the surface, it's an adventure story about a girl trying to restore magic to the world. In reality, it's about racism and power.

The story follows Zelie*, a Diviner who lost her mother to the Raid that wiped out all Maji - people with magic. When she crosses paths with Princess Amari, she suddenly finds herself embarking on the quest to restore magic to Orisha.

If you're after a fun, light, fantasy read, this is NOT it. This is dark and brutal, full of pain, rage and hatred. Racism permeates every page and it's sickening. Diviners are those who have the potential to become maji, only now that magic has been banished from the land and the gods have deserted them, Diviners are treated as a blight. They suffer at the hands of the royal guards, and are referred to as 'maggots' - a slur that suggests exactly how meaningless their lives are to those in power.

It honestly broke my heart to read about it, not least because it's a racism that is very real in our own world.

However the element of magic introduces something of a conundrum - to overthrow their captors, magic must be restored to all Diviners. But if magic is restored and Diviners overthrow their captors, what's to stop them from raging unchecked throughout the land?

I really loved the opposing ideas of Zelie and Inan. Zelie wants revenge for the slaughter of her mother and all maji, whereas Inan sees magic as a disease that will lead to slaughter if it's allowed to return. It explores the concept of power and privilege, muddying the water around our heroes so that neither side is clear and pure. Zelie is motivated by rage and hatred, while Inan is motivated by loyalty to his father and the land. But both are most strongly motivated by fear of the other side's power.

While it raises some horrifying concepts, it does so intelligently and within a well-built world. While the physical image of the world was a little hard to get a read on with them moving around all the time, the atmosphere drenches the story with fear and a sense of uneasiness. The characters make the settings come alive and it's easy to fall into this world, though it's not a particularly fun place to be.

I loved the depth to the characters, and how real their emotions felt to me. Zelie is such a strong character and she's super fierce, but the lifetime of racism has clearly made an impact. No matter how tough she is, the constant beat down has her fearful at her core, and its that fear that allows us to connect with her.

Inan's point of view adds sympathy to the story, because here is a character who demonstrates racism as an expression of fear. It's a depressing viewpoint, but it makes sense through Inan's eyes, and his feeling that allows for some really important growth.

The glimpse at our own world through the safe lens of a fantasy novel allows us to be shocked without properly feeling the horror we should at knowing this is an actual reality in our own world. The author's note at the end asks that you consider those realities if this book made you feel the pain of these characters and I find it impossible not to. My heart bleeds for all those who have suffered at the hands of racism, and reading this story allowed me to connect to some of those people and feel their pain. I found it to be a powerful story, though at times it really was horrifying to read.

It's not without it's light moments, though - there are the dynamic relationships between each of the characters, and the bond between siblings Zelie and Tzain is quite beautiful. There's that fierce protection layered over by the kind of annoyance that only siblings can cause. Then you've got the growing bond between Amari and Tzain, and as a bit of fun there's a big ol' lion thrown into the mix. (Lionaire, really, which seems to be a giant, rideable lion with horns). Plus Roen adds some brief but completely charming attitude to the mix, oozing charisma from the second we meet him and causing me to promptly fall in love. I do so love a bad boy. *happy sigh*

Overall, it's a thought-provoking novel that's not for the faint-hearted, but those willing to tackle its ideas with an open mind will be rewarded by a fascinating, complex world with opposing ideas and layered characters whose development we can all learn from.

Racists are totally gonna hate it though.

*Please note: The book itself contains lots of accented letters - I am unable to recreate the accents with my keyboard.

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