Review: Children of Blood and Bone

Children of Blood and Bone
Rating: 5/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zelie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls. 

But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were targeted and killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.

Now, Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good. 

Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers—and her growing feelings for the enemy. 

Oh. My. God. THIS BOOK. I can't even. I'm always kind of wary of books that have been overly hyped, and by the time I got to this book, it had been out for a little while, and everyone loved it and was raving about it and I was so wary, because my track record with hyped books hasn't been great...but it completely freaking blew me away and has to be one of my favourite books of 2018! The film rights have already been sold and I am so ready for the movie!  

The opening was poetically sad, and it hooked me from the beginning with the action, excellent pacing and history to the world...not to mention the characters! This book is huge, but the chapters are nicely sized, switching between the POVs of our three main characters, and to be honest with you...I sat and read this in one sitting because I couldn't put it down and I just kept having to know what happened next. I just couldn't find a place to stop reading that would allow me to function! 

Zelie is a badass who won't take any sh** from anyone. She's determined and she's strong and brave and she keeps on fighting. She's an MC you can really root for and empathise with and just be cheering for. Amari...she took some warming up for me because I wanted to shake her a couple of times in the beginning. I had much the same feelings towards her as Zelie in the beginning but she grew on me and to be fair to her...she's actually quite the badass herself once she starts believing in herself. 

Inan, my first thoughts on him where "oh dude, you've got magic". I wanted to feel sorry for him, I really did, but he made it kind of hard in the beginning. I couldn't make myself trust him, his mind connection with Zelie was screaming Kylo Ren at me and I wasn't going to make that mistake again. I sympathised with Inan and I got where he was coming from but he still frustrated me because he just kept on doing idiotic things and you where like "Don't do the thing Inan....don't do it" and then he went and did it. I enjoyed his struggle, not in a mean way, but it was brilliantly written, him overcoming everything he thought he knew and struggling to deal with the new developments in his life...even if he didn't make the right choices. 

Naturally I ended up loving Roen immediately, and I'm going to be needing more of him in the next book! Also...I ship he and Zelie so bad and I'm so freaking intrigued by him! He's literally the exact kind of character I love immediately and become obsessed with. 

Along with the characters, the world building is vivid, I loved the descriptions and the writing. Children of Blood and Bone is so richly written and steeped in lore and mythology and history that I devoured greedily. I completely lost myself in this book, it was cinematic in that I could picture the whole book playing out on a little screen in my head. I rooted for the characters, I felt despair when it seemed like things where hopeless for them and so on. 

We go on quite the journey with the characters as they track down the artefacts and so on, but we also go on another kind of journey with them as we watch them grow and change as characters and develop in to different kinds of people. For example, the Amari of the end of the book is completely different to the one at the beginning and the same can be said for Inan and Zelie. 

Children of Blood and Bone has twists and turns and things I didn't see coming and some that I did purely because I had no faith in a certain character, and the ending left me wanting more and much like Zelie, I felt quite chilled. What exactly did Amari do? The wait for the next book is going to be excruciating because I'm so ready to dive back in to this world and get back to the characters and see what happens next! 
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