Children of Blood and Bone

Children of Blood and Bone

Tomi Adeyemi

I enjoyed certain things about this book, but it felt a bit unoriginal.

Unoriginal in a sense, but not everything. The things I mostly had issues with were parts of the worldbuilding were very vague and others were very detailed. For instance, magic is explained completely - why certain people had it and others did not, how it disappeared and how it can be brought back, but the actual world had so little detail I didn't really care about the magic. I understand that it was important to the people, but that's all we know. We know what certain people could do but not what they did with it. The world itself (geographically) did not have much detail either, other than names of towns and occasionally a description of the surroundings. There was also the case of including animals but changing their names very subtly so that people understood what they were without having to be described except some of the names were lost on me and others had maybe one letter switched, it just didn't feel needed. It also felt like the plot in general was lacking. The villain is the King who wiped out magic because magical people killed his family. The good guys are trying to bring magic back and defeat the King. There were also 4 main characters (2 male and 2 female) that conveniently like each other (even though they're opposed in ideals).

I also didn't feel like the characters had much depth. I liked that the King's children had to struggle between loyalty to their Father and everything that they were taught vs. the good of the world and magical people. That's about the extent. Everything that happened was pretty predictable and the characters didn't really break out of their shells.

Not to say that the book wasn't entertaining, it certainly was. It just felt a little too similar to other YA magical reads. I'm hoping the next book is better!