One of the most popular books of 2018 was Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone. I wanted to see what all the excitement was all about, so I naturally signed up to get on the waiting list at the library to read this book. And waited months. Despite it’s popularity, and despite the fact that I realize that this is a well-written book, it was just not the right book for me right now.
I don’t know if you’ve experienced it or not, but I experience it all the time: most of the time, I’m drawn to the right book at the right time. Like last fall, after I had just started studying Welsh, I start reading The Infernal Devices, and one of the main characters, Will, utters Welsh phrases every now and then. It may be a minor thing, but it helps me identify with the characters. I didn’t experience that with this book.
Which doesn’t mean that this wasn’t a good book. I can tell the writing was good. The story seemed to have good pacing. I liked the characters. In this story, Zélie, a girl whose ancestors were magical in a land where magic has disappeared and the government reviles magic, tangles herself up with a couple members of the royal family: Amari, a princess who is appalled at what she discovered her father did, and Inan, a prince who has a secret. Along with Tzain, Zélie’s brother, they go on an adventure, where they find betrayal and friendship. The stakes are high: if they fail, magic could disappear from the land for good.
This book explores several themes: what it feels like for people to unfairly target you for intimidation because of who you are, what happens when people have too much power, and where should your loyalties lie. These are good questions to explore, and this book does it well.
Children of Blood and Bone didn’t quite resonate with me, even though I know it’s objectively a good book. For me, the mythology was just okay. I would have preferred a little more romance in this book. Perhaps, at another point in my life, I may find more ways to identify with the story and enjoy it more. Just as Will’s Welsh made me appreciate The Infernal Devices better, perhaps I’ll learn more about the culture in this book and appreciate it more at a later date.
I probably won’t read the sequel this year, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t reread Children of Blood and Bone at another point in my life. Right now, it’s me, not the book, that causes me to not be enthusiastic about this series. That could change. I certainly would not want to try to persuade anybody else to not read this book, because it might be just the thing that somebody (perhaps you) might need to read to inspire them to make them better people.
Two and a half years ago, I began what I thought would be a short story of around ten pages. Today, I wrote the final sentence down in my first draft of what had become