Reviewed by sa090 on
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The lore of this world is wonderful, I love high fantasy and I think this one classifies as such. The world Tomi Adeyemi built feels real, easy to envision and more importantly, a very interesting world to explore as well. The best thing about this book is easily the journey that allowed me to see parts of it, there is honestly nothing more boring than to know that an author has a whole world created and leaves their characters (and the reader) loitering in a confined area just hearing about it. Tomi Adeyemi’s approach was a lot more fun to take in, since the journey starts almost immediately in this book from more than one perspective before it merged into a bigger one and I absolutely loved seeing the different communities in each of the cities she had me visit, the different treatments, the different entities in it and better yet; her usage of some of these instances to get me to go deeper into the legends of this world.
This approach reminded me of the anime Seirei no Moribito which was an adaptation of Uehashi Nahoko’s novel of the same name in 2007, where the biggest legend in that anime was told through several episodes but in every episode, a new angle will be revealed and it would never be revealed for kicks either. I don’t know for sure how many books she plans to have in this series (I keep hearing 3 or 4, but nothing for sure!!!!), but I can’t wait to see more about the countries or nations outside of Orïsha... come on, she just can’t not visit them!
The magic system is another thing I loved about this series, heard she’s a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender and it shows with the way she thought up of these attributes, but I’m definitely not complaining because clans and the like with magic abilities is one of my absolute favourite things in literature and fantasy in general. I like the fact that despite the bigger focus on two magic types, she didn’t completely neglect the rest. Although not in the same level of focus I hoped to see, I liked seeing some brief showcasing of their abilities and what pushing those abilities to the limit could achieve and in turn could do to the wielder. I also really liked the fact that despite how amazing magic is, Tomi Adeyemi doesn’t really eliminate the danger posed by using it.
The characters are next in my list of things I enjoyed in this book, some more than others of course, and especially the way some of them developed. The book is actually told from 3 different POVs, and I personally liked the majority of the chapters until the part where it didn’t go my way. The best POV is hands down, Amari’s. There is something so incredibly satisfying about watching this girl grow, she starts out so meek and terrified for good reason, before she hardened with her experiences. Despite being a princess, it’s a very nice touch to know that she’s not completely useless and more importantly she’s not without her own awful past memories. Her brother on the hand has me mixed, since he’s very indecisive and it gets very annoying after a while and he still remains my least favourite POV but in his case, I liked seeing the approach to power, it’s never black and white and I believe it was portrayed perfectly with him, regardless of how annoyingly frustrating it got at times.
Tzain is probably the one who echoed my thoughts the most in this book and is probably my second favourite character after Amari. There will multiple times when he was literally the voice of reason to whatever stupid thing his sister attempted to do which I will get to in a minute, I kind of wished that he got his own POV as well, because there were times when I really wanted to hear his thoughts in bigger details. Finally, Zélie is our main protagonist and with her I liked the drive for change to happen, what she was willing to do and how she went about it. That being said, there is a part of the book where Zélie comes off as this very naive and thirsty individual that I somewhat lose almost all of the respect I built for her character and that is from the romantic angle in this book that when it concerns Zélie literally only takes, instead of gives.
Of course I’m not going to go into spoiler territory, but there is this big issue of trust in this book and it comes off as double standards-y, which is an awful way to try and convey my thoughts, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around how Zélie would treat two people from the same background in very different ways and the main basis this awful move, unfortunately and seemingly, only comes down to gender. In this aspect I expected her to act way more cautious because of her own tragic background, her own experiences so far in this book and more importantly, the contrast of worth those two individuals from that same background gave to this journey. However, I unfortunately didn’t get any of that, in the same way I hoped it would and while I’m glad that one of those individuals is seemingly gone, I’m 99.99% sure that it’s definitely not over.
The last pro I would like to mention here would be how Tomi Adeyemi dealt with the oppression in this series and how that can be easily applied in the real world in some way. Would be incredibly lovely if someone would pick up this book and connects enough with it to try and make a change of their own. I think it’s worth mentioned that I’m not a big fan of audiobooks since voices matter a lot to me, and it’s not always entertaining to hear some people, but I’m using them more often now when I’m working so I can multitask and I want to hear a story instead of the usual office noise. A friend of mine lent me her audiobook copy of it so I can do that at work and I have to give props to Bahni Turpin for one of the most amazing English voice acting and recording I’ve ever ever heard.
Final rating: 4/5
P.S I also of took the quiz in the official website to determine which of the magic types I fit into and mine turned out to be a reaper, which is still very cool to have despite me wanting to know a little bit more about the other types :)
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 12 April, 2018: Finished reading
- 12 April, 2018: Reviewed