Seeing the World Through Zélie's Eyes

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an excellent fantasy novel, written for a YA audience but appealing to old teacher guys as well, and I highly recommend it.

The author stated her purpose in writing this novel, saying plainly that it is intended to deal with modern American society, with oppression and state violence, and the novel works on that level. But it also works very well as a straightforward YA fantasy.

The novel has an Afro-centric setting, which is cool but has until recently been relatively uncommon. Though this gives the novel a unique flavor and a welcome change of pace, the novel nevertheless feels familiar and reads quick, taking advantage of traditional fantasy tropes. A main character coming of age is on the run; she finds unlikely allies; she must overcome obstacles on a quest across mountains and deserts and through jungles; she must learn how to handle her growing magical abilities while she discoveries who she is, all while she tries to overthrow a tyrant. Every bit of that is traditional fantasy, and it is nicely done. The love entanglements are handled in a very YA way, and though I found it entertaining, I suspect another (younger) audience will love it more and respond to it in a deeper way. In all of this, I thought the young author did a good job of handling plot and character and conflict and setting in a genre-savvy way that keeps it tense and fun.

There are some plot holes and implausibilities that were distracting. Like many YA novels, the actual distance between two points seems to vary depending on the needs of the action at that moment. Also, the world building, which was overall one of the successes of the novel, seemed insufficiently thought out in some places, especially in the apparently empty spaces between cities, which feel like misty gray spaces in the story. Other distractions were the Rome-like scale of the gladiatorial games in the "meager settlement" in the desert and the gold-coin-per-cup-of-water rule in that town. Suspension of disbelief makes the magic and the giant cats seem really cool, but money still needs to make sense. However, other elements of the novel overcome these objections.

The action is intense and entertaining, but the real draw is the characters and their gradual development throughout the novel. The author doesn't cheat by simply making good guys and bad guys; these are round characters, with positive and negative attributes, and they each have an arc worth paying attention to. Knowing that Tomi Adeyemi wrote this with a political purpose in mind, you might look for allegory in every action, for a simplistic narrative, but she doesn't give us that. (Not much, anyway! You probably can make every moment represent something if you're really trying.) Even the brutal king, the least sympathetic and least developed character, is treated fairly; he has his moments of looking like a father, even a caring father, not just a murderous ruler.

Complex character motivations and interactions and feelings are where the novel comes closest to realism, and where it is most affecting. Seeing the world from Zélie's eyes--remembering her mother's murder, facing daily humiliations and oppression, confronting soul-crushing hate and injustice--is painful and necessary. This is where the power of the novel comes from, and the reason why it is highly recommended.

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