Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

“They took our magic. They tried to bury us. Now we must rise.”

I am not naturally a fantasy reader, but I heard so many good things about this book. After a good handful of recommendations, I decided to give it a try. The imagery in this book is unreal, you can easily paint pictures in your mind with each chapter. It’s like the Black Lives Matter movement, meets Hunger Games, meets Harry Potter. If that reference is off-putting for you, I still encourage you to read it. This book was written in response to unarmed black people being killed at the hands of police. The author’s note at the end of the book brought me to tears. The book is written in 3 main characters’ voices Zelie, Princess Amari, and Prince Inan, each character is very different and all give their own perspectives to the events happening. Zellie is the main character, the story starts a few years after her mother was killed and magic was taken away from all of her people by the royal kingdom. The royal kingdom also killed every maji, but felt it was not necessary to kill the surviving children of the maji. If you are in tune with imagery, particularly issues that face African Americans, you can easy make connections with what each character represents. For example, a derogatory phrased used for the children is “Maggot”. This book is the first in a series and I cannot wait until the next book is released in December 2019. I actually pre-ordered it on Amazon already. This is a long read. If you’re like me with a busy schedule and juggling twelve million tasks a day, then I would suggest starting it at a time when you know you can dedicate to it. If I could have done it all over again, I would have waited until summer or winter break. However, it was definitely worth reading. I purchased the hard copy, the audiobook, and the Kindle version. I used Kindle Whispersync as well.