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A review by wordsofclover
Children of Anguish and Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.5
Oh goodness, where to start with this one. The best thing about this book is the stunning cover and I must say the cover designer for all three Orisha books did a great job as they’re all so beautiful. Unfortunately that’s where the good ends and everything from the first page onwards was downhill for me.
We meet with Zelie once again following the events from book 2 which saw Zelie and her companions knocked out and waking up on some kind of prison ship. From the start of book 3, we find out that this actually has nothing to do with Nehanda and the titans but is in face a brand new enemy they call the ‘Skulls’ led by someone called King Baldyr who wants to harness Zelie’s magic and has no issue with sacrificing Orishans as he goes.
Zelie soon has visions of another girl who Baldyr needs to complete his journey to a living god - and she must get to her first so that’s what she does alongside Tzain and Amari. You might be wondering but what about Inan and the Orisha they left behind? Well it appears we are more or less done with that story and that fight as now all they have to do is say ‘hey look at these new enemies. Let’s all make up so we can fight these guys instead’ and this somehow solves decades of fighting and maltreatment of the magi. Super lazy writing.
The new enemies really threw me off - and the story went in a completely different direction to what I thought it would. I think if we knew more about the Skulls in book 2 or even had the first half of book 3 in book 2, the books would have felt more linear. But I felt completely discombobulated that everything we had worked toward in the first books were just forgotten about in an instant.
We do travel away from Orisha and discover the lands of Gaia where Mae’e lives. Here Amari finally gets the lesbian love story that was very obvious from how she talked about Binta (they were never just friends, come on) but the problem is it’s so rushed and insta love - but then again I have found all the love relationships in this trilogy to be super quick and intense with not much believable time. The only good thing about this book was the lack of Zelie and Inan’s boring love-hate-love relationship. I did much prefer Zelie’s relationship with Roen but unfortunately there’s no update on this as Roen has simply completely disappeared - he was mentioned once in an ‘I hope he’s alright’ though by Zelie but other than that, nothing. Which is WILD and I don’t understand it at all - he was a major love interest in book 2 and had quite a bit to do with the rebellion yet he’s hardly even mentioned in book 3. WHAT!
The timeline as well for this book zipped through so fast, it didn’t make sense either. How quickly could everyone sail? It felt like they were in a game of Pokemon and could traverse seas within minutes. Once they reached Gaia, Tzain goes off to become some kind of ultra warrior within a week or so - and listen I love me a training montage but Tzain has been such a vanilla side character, it felt odd to have his POV thrown into the mix all of a sudden and I didn’t really care about his hulk axe.
The final battle was fine, the sacrifices were expected and the epilogue was awful - again nothing really actually sorted just some kind of magical ‘we’re all best friends now’. You’re telling me the Nehanda we know from book 2 would suddenly be besties with the magi even after her beloved son has died to save one of them. No way.
I’m not sure what happened with this. The hype for book 1 was so real and it had such a sense of beautiful magic and a story focused on black history and characters in a way I feel we hadn’t seen before. Maybe the pressure got to the author but there was such a large time gap between book 2 and 3 - and then for book 3 to be so poor, it’s so sad. This whole book felt rushed and ill thought out and I just really feel like the author wanted to or maybe was contractually obliged to finish it up by a certain date.
We meet with Zelie once again following the events from book 2 which saw Zelie and her companions knocked out and waking up on some kind of prison ship. From the start of book 3, we find out that this actually has nothing to do with Nehanda and the titans but is in face a brand new enemy they call the ‘Skulls’ led by someone called King Baldyr who wants to harness Zelie’s magic and has no issue with sacrificing Orishans as he goes.
Zelie soon has visions of another girl who Baldyr needs to complete his journey to a living god - and she must get to her first so that’s what she does alongside Tzain and Amari. You might be wondering but what about Inan and the Orisha they left behind? Well it appears we are more or less done with that story and that fight as now all they have to do is say ‘hey look at these new enemies. Let’s all make up so we can fight these guys instead’ and this somehow solves decades of fighting and maltreatment of the magi. Super lazy writing.
The new enemies really threw me off - and the story went in a completely different direction to what I thought it would. I think if we knew more about the Skulls in book 2 or even had the first half of book 3 in book 2, the books would have felt more linear. But I felt completely discombobulated that everything we had worked toward in the first books were just forgotten about in an instant.
We do travel away from Orisha and discover the lands of Gaia where Mae’e lives. Here Amari finally gets the lesbian love story that was very obvious from how she talked about Binta (they were never just friends, come on) but the problem is it’s so rushed and insta love - but then again I have found all the love relationships in this trilogy to be super quick and intense with not much believable time. The only good thing about this book was the lack of Zelie and Inan’s boring love-hate-love relationship. I did much prefer Zelie’s relationship with Roen but unfortunately there’s no update on this as Roen has simply completely disappeared - he was mentioned once in an ‘I hope he’s alright’ though by Zelie but other than that, nothing. Which is WILD and I don’t understand it at all - he was a major love interest in book 2 and had quite a bit to do with the rebellion yet he’s hardly even mentioned in book 3. WHAT!
The timeline as well for this book zipped through so fast, it didn’t make sense either. How quickly could everyone sail? It felt like they were in a game of Pokemon and could traverse seas within minutes. Once they reached Gaia, Tzain goes off to become some kind of ultra warrior within a week or so - and listen I love me a training montage but Tzain has been such a vanilla side character, it felt odd to have his POV thrown into the mix all of a sudden and I didn’t really care about his hulk axe.
The final battle was fine, the sacrifices were expected and the epilogue was awful - again nothing really actually sorted just some kind of magical ‘we’re all best friends now’. You’re telling me the Nehanda we know from book 2 would suddenly be besties with the magi even after her beloved son has died to save one of them. No way.
I’m not sure what happened with this. The hype for book 1 was so real and it had such a sense of beautiful magic and a story focused on black history and characters in a way I feel we hadn’t seen before. Maybe the pressure got to the author but there was such a large time gap between book 2 and 3 - and then for book 3 to be so poor, it’s so sad. This whole book felt rushed and ill thought out and I just really feel like the author wanted to or maybe was contractually obliged to finish it up by a certain date.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Slavery
Moderate: Violence
Minor: Death