Children of Blood and Bone
Children of Blood and Bone / Virtue & Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi
A genuinely compelling series that struggles to outshine its cliché premise.
I know there was hype before the debut was released, and I know the sequel has been out for over a year, I am late to the party, but these books got lost in the oversaturated genre. Maybe I should have waited for a little longer after reading Shadow & Bone to better enjoy them. But I feel like these were a disappointing addition to the subgenre: Hunger Games…but with magic.
A young/poor/hidden heroine is living in an authoritarian society. Her secret/suppressed powers are released in a moment of life or death. This makes her a target of a lethal agent/possible love interest sent from the emperor/king/president. On the run, her spunky/resilient/suddenly dangerous friends help her come to terms with her powers. She is introduced to a teacher/mentor/exposition dump that reveals that she is the last hope of a society of magicians/wizards/magi/warriors. The showdown unleashes a fiery uprising in the waiting.
Adeyemi’s world-building is thorough and mythical. The characters are captivating enough that I kept reading even when I knew exactly what was about to happen. The story follows the routine, beat for beat. I was not excited at the end but intrigued enough to immediately pick up the sequel, only to be more disappointed. While it was not as predictable as the first, the sequel Children of Virtue and Vengeance did not branch far enough away from expectations to grab my attention. It stuck to the program of a filler sequel. Meaning it was just set up for a third book with a war between the uprising and the government.
Again, her writing is phenomenal! There is depth to her characters and world. There are so many analogies/references/tie-ins. Adeyemi is such a detailed imagination. And that is why I am disappointed in both the first and second parts of this series. There was so much potential here. The world is so rich, the characters could go anywhere, so why did she make them follow the same beaten path of Shadow and Bone, Hunger Games, and so on?
