Children of Blood and Bone

So I was pretty excited to read this. I first came across it in The Atlantic magazine; there was an article with glowing praise for this fantasy novel set in Africa which wove in African mythological traditions. Now, looking back at that review, I think the author was glowing more about the symbolism of this novel being written, write now, than the actual book itself.

For this was an insufferable, intolerable read. At the beginning, I was willing to overlook the awful writing, because the plot seemed to be going somewhere. By the way, I don't automatically give YA novels a pass on writing. There are plenty of writers for young adults who can write at least quite good, if not great. As the book dragged on, though, it became clear that there just wasn't much here. It feels like it might have been rushed out? It almost seemed to get worse, more repetitive and haphazard the further you got.

The biggest problem with the book is the characterization - none of the characters were remotely interesting, and often their actions didn't make sense. None of the groundwork was put in to make us care about these people. In the first 50 pages of the novel, something tragic happens to one of the main characters, which becomes a rallying cry for her for the rest of the book. But it evokes no emotion in the reader, simply because we never got to know her before this. The novel rarely visits the past, rarely shows us why these characters became who they are now - it just drops us in the middle. And the way they are described is so damn repetitive! “The sea salt scent of her soul” must have shown up 100 times - what does that even mean?!? Using these lines so frequently, each character became reductive to a single thing - For Zelie - it's her home by the sea, for Amari, her friend Binta.

Don't even get me started on Inan. That boy does not make sense.

Now for the plot - it's boring, and unevenly paced. The three main characters are on a quest, one which they manage to fulfill surprisingly easy. There are very few twists and turns on the way to the end of the book - creating a reading experience where the stakes are minimal and, by the end of the book, you don't even care what happens.

Many reviewers have mentioned the magic - that's boring too, somehow! There are no rules, no explanation, no mystery. Any time we need something to move the plot along, magic does it. The young adults in this book don't even need training to use their powers!

I'm dropping this book in the nearest little free library I find and hoping to never encounter it again. Already I can barely remember what happened.