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

I've been waiting to read this for about six months. I have a friend who’s been raving about it and we kept missing each other in my attempts to borrow her copy. Now that I’ve read it, I understand why she was so excited. Adeyemi describes a rich world with a strong well-developed conflict and vivid characters. The system of maji is internally consistent and the main character, Zelie, is an excellent champion, if somewhat aggressively tortured as a heroine. In fact, if I have a criticism it is that all of the characters are carrying around enough damage to destroy a city and very little of it gets resolved by the end of the novel. While it is clear that this is the opening to a series and that these things will likely eventually resolve, the sheer amount of pain these characters carry around is both engaging and overwhelming. As a result, several sections of the narrative slow to a snails crawl as the narrator explores and mulls over their pain. This is all appropriate to the narrative and the world, but the story could have used some more moments of levity to give the reader a break. All in all, a good read and I’m looking forward to the next book coming out sometime this year: Children of Virtue and Vengeance

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