When Zélie was small, her mother — a powerful maji — was stripped of her magic, dragged away by the king’s soldiers, and hanged. The same thing happened all across the country Orïsha, and no magic has been seen in the country since then. The children of the maji, marked by their white hair, remain figures of suspicion and terror under the authoritarian regime of the same king who killed their parents. Zélie is one such child.
This! Cover! I absolutely love this cover. That steely look is exactly Zélie’s character: Though she sometimes acts rashly, and though she lives in fear that what happened to her mother will happen to her, she’s a woman of resolve and courage.
In our other point-of-view chapters, we have the two children of the king: Amari, who sees her best friend (a diviner like Zélie) killed in front of her, and Inan, who desperately wants to be a dutiful son but conceals secrets of his own. Amari runs away with a scroll that she knows is important to her father; Zélie rescues her from the palace guards because Zélie is brave; and Inan is tasked with bringing both of them (and the scroll) back. Pretty soon, Amari and Zélie and Zélie’s super-sweet brother Tzain learn that they have the opportunity (and maybe the DESSSSSSSTINY) to bring magic back to Orïsha.
(I have left out so many plot bits. This book goes quickly but it is long. However that is the main gist of it.)
The best thing about Children of Blood and Bone is its attitude towards oppression and rebellion. Zélie learns over and over again over the course of this book that the only way to become free is to make herself free, but neither the book nor Zélie have a rosy view of what the world will look like if the maji regain their powers. Even as she knows that she has to restore magic to keep her people from being slaughtered and oppressed by the will of the tyrant king, she’s afraid of what will happen when a generation of diviners gains magic for the first time in their lives. Will that power just become another means of oppressing those less powerful? Will it become a new vector for chaos and disruption?
(God, I just scrolled up to look at the cover again and it’s still so gorgeous. Great work by designer Rich Deas.)
Actually, I was lying before. My real favorite thing about Children of Blood and Bone is that while Zélie is the sine qua non of this quest to restore magic, she is never fighting on her own or for herself alone. She is fundamentally part of a community, whether it’s the tiny community of herself and Tzain and Amari, or the broader community of diviners who want the same things that she does. All of our heroes have people that they’re fighting for — that much is standard in any rebellion story — but most crucially, they have so many people they’re fighting with. It was a lovely subversion of the kind of Chosen One story that I’ve seen so much of.
Both of these elements — the community thing and the power thing — come together in the cliffhanger this book ends on. Though Children of Blood and Bone is a chunkster of a book, it flew by and left me eagerly anticipating the sequel.
Note: I received an advance copy of Children of Blood and Bone from the publisher for review consideration.