I don't know if this will actually be a thing or not.
It really depends on how much I hate myself, which right now it's a lot. So we'll just see how it goes.
I recently finished Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
and I just have a lot of things that I want to discuss about it.
First of all, what the fuck.
Second of all, what the fuck.
And that about covers it. Thank you so much for watching. See you next time, bye.
Seriously speaking though, this book got so much hype when it first came out.
Everybody was just shitting their pants over it.
Me personally, I didn't buy into the hype. My pants were pretty dry
But a few months later my friend started reading it and she had mentioned that it sounded a lot like Avatar.
So that changes things. If you guys aren't familiar with Avatar it is basically
the closest thing to perfection that humanity has ever attained.
In my opinion. And factually speaking.
So the main character is Zelie. She is just a salty and resentful bitch.
She's just salty about everything.
Which in retrospect is probably a result of watching your mother die when you were a kid,
growing up with years of that emotional trauma, living in a group full of repressed people
that basically had been impoverished and eradicated their whole life
to the point where they have no sense of cultural identity.
Yeah, her life sucks.
So now she's living with her dad and her brother Tzain or Zayne or whatever.
I'm not sure how to pronounce his name.
There's not much to say about his character other than he's emotionally constipated.
Just like how I sound like I'm constipated when I try to pronounce his name.
She also has a mentor named Mama Agba who teaches her how to fight with a staff,
which is very fitting because Mama Agba also walks around like she has to stick up her ass.
And she has a somewhat peaceful life
if you just like ignore all the oppression and poverty and all that kind of, you know, fun stuff.
But her journey to restore magic and save the world starts when she runs into Amari.
She bumps into her when she's trying to sell fish at a market and if that's not a, uh lesbian foreshadowing,
I don't know what is.
Amari is a princess who runs away from her whole family and steals a magic scroll from her dad,
because even though her dad has been killing and enslaving Magi for years,
she finally decides it's a deal breaker when he does it to somebody that she knows.
I mean girl, you're kind of late but better late than never I guess.
For the first 200 pages, Zelie is just ready to stab a bitch, and that bitch's name is Amari.
It doesn't matter what Amari says or does she would just be rude as fuck to her.
Amari could literally be eating something, and then Zelie would be like, look at that bitch eating crackers.
There's this really great part where Amari is saying my father killed my best friend.
And Zelie replies your best friend or your slave?
Do best friends press your clothes and make your food without pay?
Dude, you a bitch but... you ain't wrong.
I just appreciate how Zelie is basically saying that
you don't get brownie points just for showing human decency.
I respect that, you know. I respect that.
And then there is...
Inan.
[sigh]
There's just a lot to unpack with that character but we'll get to that in a second.
Inan is the prince and also the brother of Amari.
They used to play knife roulette when they were little. It's kind of like this awkward story.
You ask them about it, they get really sad.
He's just hell bent on killing Zelie ever since they first met.
And they first met when he actually burned down her village so...
real meet-cute.
I love it when a man destroys my livelihood.
And ever since then they start having these dreams or visions where they can communicate with each other.
Although really those scenes are just spent with them telling each other how much they hate each other.
Like Zelie will pop in and then she'll be like, hey, Inan you little bitch.
Inan will get mad at her and then she'll get mad at him,
and then they just continue like this little flirtationship for the next day and the next day onwards.
At this point, I am fucking hyped.
I don't care how much you hate each other, if you start dreaming about one another,
you gonna fuck.
I am so excited. This book is just check marking everything off of my list.
You have a girl with magical powers traveling around with her non magic brother.
Actually, flying around on this big ass like, animal sidekick.
They meet a character who changes their destiny,
they're being chased around by a prince who's torn between fulfilling his duty to his family and country or
standing up for what he actually believes in,
and they have to complete their quest before the solstice.
So a lot of deja vu here, but I am totally in for it.
Now, I'm gonna dive into some spoilers and...
just give a little discussion about my
good ol' friend Inan because he...
He's a piece of work. Let me tell you that.
If you don't want to get spoiled um...
I can leave a time stamp in the description so you can jump to the end with my overall thoughts.
But let's talk about Inan.
Right now.
Where, where do I even begin?
First of all, what kind of bullshit was that?
I think that's like the only thing I can really say about him.
Like what is, what is wrong with you?
I really wanted to like him, like I truly did. And I wanted to root for their relationship, too.
I was so excited for their relationship.
When they started dreaming about each other,
Inan couldn't stop thinking about her and remembering her face,
I was like dude. There is something going on here and I am here for this.
I think the universe listened to my wishes a little bit too hard,
because then they gave me the relationship right away with no buildup, no development,
you turn to the next page and it's like, like it's there with no explanation.
That's, that's literally how it happened.
They hate each other ever since the beginning of the book,
and then there's just one scene in the middle of it where he's just ready to stab Zelie,
and then he goes through like 10 seconds of flashbacks through her whole life and then he's like,
you know what? She ain't that bad.
I think I'm just gonna throw away everything I've ever learned
and just join her side because I had a 10 second epiphany.
What's even more preposterous is that Zelie is suddenly DTF with him
just because he protects her like one or two times.
Are you kidding me?
You gave Amari so much shit for like the first 200 pages ,
and she threw away her whole life just to protect the Magi
and I don't see you two making out underneath a waterfall.
I'm just saying I think that's homophobic.
I understand that Zelie and Inan are linked together through their magic,
and so these visions are supposed to give them like a deeper understanding of one another but honestly
I just feel like that's a plot device.
It's a convenient plot device for them to fall in love without actually setting up
you know any interactions or a dialog where they could understand each other.
It was just really disappointing to see a relationship that was super rushed
when I know it's capable of being better.
You put so much effort and care into the world-building, why didn't we see that with the main relationship?
And it's also really unnecessary.
Like what was the whole point of them falling in love, other than to create drama?
It's not so that Zelie can have more emmpathy about the nuances of the other side of the war
because that's what Amari is for. Again, Fish market.
I also don't think Inan is a good character. I think he's just a very weak character
He's super wishy-washy. He flip-flops between sides and even personalities like all the time.
It's true that characters have layers and you know, they they can feel many contradicting emotions,
but to have it all happen within such a short timeframe just feels very inconsistent.
And I know there's gonna be this whole redemption arc for him because
I know he's gonna be alive in the next book,
But honestly the foundation for his redemption arc isn't strong enough for me to wanna root for him.
Or even care. Any time he literally does anything, people get killed.
And then he's like, oh no, how could this have happened? How could anyone have predicted this?
Your dad has been killing Magi for years. He literally talks about killing Magi all the time.
And you didn't expect him to torture Zelie or kill her dad after you
basically handed him over on a platter like it was Thanksgiving dinner?
Really? Like are you that stupid?
There's a difference between feeling conflicted over your sense of duty to your family and
then being a fucking idiot.
And that's what Inan was. He's a fucking idiot. He's a coward, he's incompetent, and he's cancelled.
You can justify this and say that is a purposeful character flaw and you know,
I would kind of believe that, but it doesn't make him worthy for Zelie.
She deserves better.
Zelie has been through so much shit in her life. The last thing that she needs is even more bullshit.
You know what I mean? Like she needs someone who is kind, who is nurturing,
who is a princess, whose name is Amari.
I don't know. I'm just naming like general characteristics.
For real though, like Amari is the only character worthy of being with Zelie.
I didn't care for her in the beginning, but she really fucking came through in the end.
She is a ride or die. When she comforted Zelie, like during her whole PTSD thing and was like
brushing her hair and like comforting her and everything, I was literally tearing up.
That is how you develop a relationship from point A to point B..
And when she stabbed her dad and told him, "Don't worry, I'll make a better queen."
What the fuck?
I was whisper screaming the whole time reading those final chapters because
everybody was like getting shanked and killed left and right
and Amari just fucking came through to the very end.
She has more balls than Inan ever will, and I hope they shrivel up when he bleeds out on that island.
So basically what I'm trying to say is that Inan's nickname should not be a little prince,
It should be little bitch, because that's what he is.
So all ranting aside, despite the major issues I had with one of the main characters,
I actually still gave this book 5 out of 5 stars.
I was so close to giving it a 4 though just because
[sigh]
Inan was really testing my patience, but overall, it was still a really decent book
and I don't think the issues that I had with it diminish the importance of the book.
Because it really is important. It's a book that got published in a genre that is so riddled with
White fantasy, you know.
Like, you always see a cast of white characters saving the world and the world is very colorblind.
And it's just really amazing to see a fantasy and a fantasy YA of all things, have an all black cast
with a main character that's like a dark skinned female.
They incorporated colorism in the book, which I don't think is seen a lot in fantasy.
So royalty are light skinned. Oppressed and impoverished people are dark skinned.
And again, it just parallels to a lot of the racial dynamics that we have in real life.
And I think that's why I actually got, you know, pretty teary eyed when I was like reading
the ending and seeing what was happening because
it came from a place that was real.
Her writing and the description of Zelie's grief and loss were just so tragically and beautifully written
and I really felt for her and again, it just, it all felt very real to me.
I knew where it was coming from because I knew that
the author was writing this in a place where we see so many of these things happen on TV.
I don't know man. It's just some real shit and I appreciate that.
The last few chapters were some of the most emotionally and
action-packed scenes I had ever read and it was, it was fucking crazy.
The story is character driven and the female friendship is just
[kiss]
fucking fantastic.
So yeah.
I think the book actually deserves the hype.
And I'm gonna continue reading the rest of this series
Despite the issues I had with this book.
I think that the author will probably remedy it in the next book.
So I have a lot of faith in the author, and I genuinely want to support her. I think it's a good book.
Inan is still a little bitch though.
You go to bed at night and you lay there and you take responsibility for yourself.
Cause nobody's gonna take responsibility for you.