Children of Blood and Bone

New York Times Bestseller 

1. Bibliography
Adeyemi, T. 2018. Children of Blood and Bone. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 9781250170972

2. Summary
Amari, princess of Orïsha, witnesses her dad, the King, kill Binta, the house servant who she always saw as being her best friend after she holds onto a scroll and sparks the one thing that haunts the kingdom of Orïsha: magic. For the kingdom, magic was always seen as a source of evil. Amari retrieves the scroll and leaves the kingdom. The King send his son, the prince, Inan to capture and kill Amari and the scroll. In the village, Amari finds herself in danger and Zélie happened to find her in danger and protected her. Amari shows Zélie the scroll and explains it is magic. Since the Raid, when the King and his people killed all marji’s (people with magic), learning about the scroll brought hope to Zélie as she wants to bring magic back. The two then set off with Tzain, Zélie’s brother, to Chândomblé, a place they were told would help them bring magic back. Throughout their journey, Zélie, Amari and Tzain come across many obstacles that almost lead them to death, and Inan continues to hunt after them. When they finally arrive to Chândomblé, they meet a sêntaro, Lekan Olamilekan, who explains what happened in the Raid and says that Zélie is the chosen one, and does a ritual that turns her into a maji. In order to make magic permanent again, Zélie must complete a sacred ritual that requires the scroll, a bone dagger, and the sunstone and the ritual must be completed in a sacred island, home to the temple of the marji's gods. Inan finally reaches them, and Tzain, Amari and Zélie end up seperated when Tzain and Amari are taken by divíners to a camp while Zélie and Inan are left behind. Traveling to the camp to save Tzain and Amari, Zélie learns that Inan is also a maji who has been hiding this secret from his father and hoped to kill magic in order to satisfy his father, the King. This is when Zélie convinces Inan that he should want to bring magic back, and Inan agrees to help them in hopes of becoming a better king than his father. When the two find the camp and rescue Amari and Tzain, the divíners learn that Zélie is trying to bring magic back and they agree to help her reach the temple. Unfortunately, the King and his guards capture them and Zélie is tortured by having “maggot” carved in her back, which causes her to lose her magic. Inan is confused on whether he wants to please his father and kill magic or be a better king and save magic. Unsure of his decision, he still decides to help Zélie, and sets her free from the room in which she was held captive. Zélie, Amari and Tzain continue on their journey to reach the temple and upon arriving, Zélie realizes it is an ambush as she sees the King and his guards have Baba, Zélie and Tzain’s father hostage and killed him in front of them. This sets off a fight between the king, the guards and Zélie and the mercenaries who agreed to help them with the divíners. Inan, still wanting to please his father, gets Zélie angry and since she still does not know how to control her magic, she accidentally burns the scroll, and they think this will end all magic. As Inan is happily looking for the King to show him what happened, he sees a mercenary heading towards the King to kill him. Inan unknowingly uses his magic to kill the mercenary and the King is disgusted by this and kills Inan. Amari, saddened by what she saw, fights the King and  kills him. Zélie uses the bone dagger to cut her hand to use her blood as she holds onto the sunstone. Amari is left to be queen of Orïsha, and Zélie’s journey with magic has just begun.

3. Discussion
This book took me a while to really dive in and enjoy it, and even when I was enjoying the book, I still felt a bit confused on what was happening and some of the language in the book added to this confusion as well. While reading the story, I noticed some chapters were back stories of events that had already happened, and I often found myself getting them confused with the main story.

Because of the high language and a father killing his son, I would not recommend this book for middle school students, and rather high school students will better comprehend and handle much of the language and storyline that is used.

4. Connections
According to the author’s note written after the story, it states that Adeyemi wrote this story when she kept seeing and hearing news of unarmed black men, women and children being shot by the police. Police brutality is not a theme that is evident in the story, so this can be a great topic to discuss in a classroom setting. Students can read this story as a class, and the teacher can discuss the theme that they grasped while reading before discussing the actual reason as to why the author wrote this story.

There is a second book titled, Children of Virtue and Vengeance, which continues the story of Amari’s journey of taking the throne and Zélie working to bring the kingdom of Orïsha together. Even though Children of Blood and Bone was at times confusing, I do plan on reading the second part as I am interested in what happens next to Amari and Zélie.