I do love a good magic system themed story and Children of Blood and Bone did not disappoint. A story about journey, self-discovery and a potentially world changing quest to bring back magic. I enjoyed all the character interactions and the growth that they all go through while trying to find themselves and their places in the world and with each other.

The in depth description and detailing of the magic system and how this is inspired by West African mythology has made me want to go and read more material relating to it as well! I feel it is difficult to describe a magic system with just the right amount of detail but Adeyemi nails this beautifully.

However, I feel there were a couple of typical standard sort of romance tropes that honestly, this book just did not need. While watching romance blossom is nice, I don't feel it added any extra level of depth to the storytelling and the story would still have been just as beautiful without. As I didn't dislike the romance, this story still gets 5 stars in my book and I am looking forward to reading the sequel when I have fully processed the book I just finished reading.

Content Warnings

osladek's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This book was very meh for me. The constant action kept me engaged, but the plot and characters bored me. The magic system and world building were great, but I really didn't feel any connection to the 3 main characters. I was super disturbed by the enemies to lovers in this book and was very happy

Spoiler

that Inan dies and doesn't have a redemption arc because he absolutely did not deserve one after everything

I haven't read YA in a long time and this book reminded me why. The very basic plot that is the practically the same as every other high fantasy did not keep my attention as I always knew what was going to happen. I don't normally mind a basic plot if the worldbuilding and character arcs are worth it. I think these characters suffered from 1 dimensionality which made them not feel like individuals. Amari and Zelie don't seem similar in the beginning, but once they interact with each other and we get their POVs back to back they totally blend together into the same character. I just was not moved by this book. The allegory to police brutality definitely felt powerful and extremely relevant to the modern day prison industrial complex, but not enough to forgive these boring characters and plotline.

Content Warnings

ienbdri's review against another edition

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adventurous tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Considering the length of this book, there was way too little world-building and literally no character development. The protagonists' decisions didn't make any sense and everything felt random?

Content Warnings

peaches7's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

kyrstin_p1989's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Stunning. This book is about taking back your power and embracing your magic. It’s well-written, interesting, and powerful. The chapters are short, the characters are interesting, and the plot is exciting.

Content Warnings

felinedevil's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Make sure to read/listen to the authors note at the end of the novel. There’s an important message written by the author.

Content Warnings

annaparente's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Honestly, I have a lot of thoughts, so I’m going to start with the good and we’ll slowly get into the bad.

The Good

I got this book on sale for THREE DOLLARS!! And it’s a special edition too, with a poster and an annotated chapter and everything. Very nice (and honestly the only reason I bought the book)

The writing was generally very good. Good descriptors, good pacing. I feel like this is often overlooked when critiquing or reviewing a book, but the range of vocabulary was excellent, and it was one of those books where every word was the perfect word for that moment. No half-useful synonyms.

The best books, especially fantasy, take a real world issue and reflect it (differently) into a fictional world. This book did that very well without seeming preachy. The world itself was also very well built, and I enjoyed reading about it.

Overall, I liked the characters.

The (semi)Bad

Honestly, these aren’t major issues. Did they knock the book down an entire star? Yes. But I would still recommend the book, and for the most part I was able to overlook them.

First off: the writing. Yes, I know I said it was good — for the most part, it was. However, it had a very melodramatic quality to it that I just didn’t like. Here’s a quote (page 29:

“The night King Saran hung my people for the world to see, declaring war against the maji of today and tomorrow. The night magic died. [new paragraph] The night we lost everything. [new paragraph]”

And then, on the same page:

“Maybe he would’ve recovered if he hadn’t woken to find Mama’s corpse bound in black chains. But he did. [new paragraph]. He’s never been the same since. [new paragraph]”

Constantly using single-sentence paragraphs to drive a point home or make an impact causes it to completely lose its effect. And in the case of the first quote, if you’re using repetition for emphasis, you don’t also need to add a new paragraph for additional emphasis. The same point would have come across if it were all in the same paragraph. In the case of the second quote, that single-sentence paragraph could have been deleted entirely. It didn’t explain anything that the reader couldn’t deduce for themselves.

Secondly, also in relation to the writing, there were an annoying amount of “Ugh!”’s (written just like that, italics and all). This was a very minor issue and honestly not even a factor in bringing the rating down.

Third, and most important, were the characters. I felt like I could have liked them, but I really just liked their relationships with each other. The melodramatic writing made it really difficult for me to connect with them, like I should be really attached but I wasn’t. Zelie and Amari eventually grew on me, but Inan’s character growth just felt really weak.

I appreciate enemies-to-lovers (Zelie and Inan), but by the end of the book I was really frustrated by their relationship. It just felt really pointless, like it was thrown in there so both siblings of each family could have a love interest (in the bookish community, we call this ‘coupling’).

Fourth: some of the dialogue was very stilted.

Fifth: repeat after me: I cannot kill off a character solely for plot value.

Did you repeat?

Do you understand?

Good.

Now repeat after me again: I will not kill off multiple characters for shock value at various points in the book.

Did the message sink in?

Excellent.

Overall

I’ve seen other reviews say this book was really ‘trope-y’ and yeah, it kind of is. It has moments where it shines really bright, but there are other times where it feels jarringly unoriginal. I want to say it didn’t like up to my expectations, but the book came without a jacket so I really had no expectations. As a whole, I really enjoyed the book, and I would probably recommend it, even with its flaws. However, I read some reviews for the second book and I’m not sure I’ll continue, especially considering the third book hasn’t even come out yet and I have no idea how there’s enough content for this to become a trilogy (considering how much was crammed into this book).

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