strange and random happenstance: Orisha

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
Published by: Anchor
Publication Date: March 6th, 2018
Format: Paperback, 496 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

In Orïsha King Saran put an end to the maji. He didn't just find a way to stop the flow of magic he also murdered all divîners over the age of thirteen to protect his land. A decade later divîners are still persecuted. Maligned, taxed, and looked down on, they are second-class citizens. Zélie is a powerless divîner still mourning the murder of her mother. But she trains with Mama Agba so that she will be able to protect her family should King Saran send anyone else to finish the job he already started a decade ago. On the day of her graduation royal guards descend on the fishing village of Ilorin and levy an increase in taxes. One Zélie and her family can ill afford. Zélie and her brother Tzain decide to go to the capital city of Lagos to sell a rare fish at market to pay the new taxes. While they are successful in making money they also run into a heap of trouble, the Princess Amari. She has stolen a scroll from her father after he used it to awaken the powers of Amari's one and only friend whom she then witnessed him murder. Hiding Amari in Ilorian will put the entire village at risk, especially as Amari's brother Inan is the commander of the Royal Army and will do anything to prove his loyalty to his father, even hunt down his own sister and burn a village of innocents to the ground. It's Mama Agba who tells Zélie, Tzain, and Amari that they must travel to the ancient temple of Chândomblé to restore magic. Their journey will not be an easy one with Inan on their tail. Especially as it turns out he is a maji who can infiltrate Zélie's dreams. It is his self-loathing that drives him to carry out his father's wishes. At the temple Zélie's powers are awakened, though it leaves her in a weakened state. Once again escaping the clutches of Inan they realize that he isn't the only risk as Orïsha is rife with those who wish them harm from corrupt guards to nefarious nobles. Battles, kidnappings, corruption, the trio are hunted but occasionally they find help from those who want magic restored and the balance of power to shift. But can they succeed when the odds are stacked against them? Will Zélie be able to forge a link with her ancestors back to the Sky Mother and save Orïsha? Only time will tell.

I read this book when it was released and the one thing that I hoped would come of it is that it would open the door to similar, though better written, literature. Which if you peruse the shelves of your local bookstore or library you will see it has done. Because without it's legacy this book is nothing. It doesn't even feel like a finished book. It needed to be more polished, more refined, and the errors definitely had to be removed. And don't get me started on how rough the worldbuilding is. Orïsha doesn't work, compass points are all over the map. And not figuratively. This feels like it was rushed to print. They saw their chance to label Tomi Adeyemi the next J.K. Rowling and went for it. A label that hasn't aged well. At all. In fact with the big climactic scenes it almost felt as if this was a treatment for a movie. Tomi Adeyemi would just fill in the details later with the VFX people and not bother to put it on the page now. But seeing as the film adaptation has been in production limbo for years now, perhaps the time could have been taken to tighten up the book? Because, shocking as it may be to some people, a book can be the final form of a story, not everything has to be adapted into a film or television show. In fact some people don't want their favorite books adapted to appease the masses. And who is this book really written for? The sheer amount of tropes strung together to faintly resemble a story shows Adeyemi to be an immature writer. The story is told through different character's voices and you could not tell the voices apart. When I really lost it though was when I found lines in this book that were in a "Which YA Trope Do You Hate?" Quiz that I took online. The most notable being "she released the breath she didn't know she was holding." Though in fairness, a lot of authors stumble into that one. It was more the cumulative effect that got to me. The lack of originality, the warring evolutionary progress of different people, and the fact that she did high seas Hunger Games. That one was just a step too far. A desert town wastes ALL there clean water to have a battle to the death on boats? Um, why!?! I mean, really, why!?! In the end this book had me wondering what the actual fuck. But at least reading other reviews I don't feel alone. Everyone was confused. Well almost everyone. Those few who weren't were this book's target audience.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Adaptation, Africa, Children of Blood and Bone, Diviners, For the Love of Book Clubs, J.K. Rowling, Legacy, Maji, Mythology, Orisha, Sky Mother, The Hunger Games, Tomi Adeyemi, Tropes, VFX, Worldbuilding, YA, Zelie

The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
Published by: Tor.com
Publication Date: August 21st, 2018
Format: Kindle, 112 Pages
Rating: ★★★★1/2★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

It's 1884 and the Civil War has been in detente for years, nothing more than a temporary armistice. Skirmishes still break out and old General Tubman is still waging her guerilla war against the Confederate States of America where slavery has reached new levels of horror with the use of drapeto gas. In the free city of New Orleans street urchin Creeper is about to stumble across valuable information that could reignite the war. She lives atop Les Grand Murs, large walls constructed as airship ports that also saves the city from the tempêtes noires that strike New Orleans once a year. Thirteen years ago Creeper was born during one of these storms, making her one of Oya's children. Oya is an Orisha, the goddess of storms, life, death, and rebirth. One night Creeper is hiding in her alcove and hears soldiers for the Confederate States planning a meeting with a Haitian scientist to acquire The Black God's Drums. Creeper isn't naive and she puts two and two together and realizes her information could get her the life she wants aboard an airship as well as save some lives. She approaches an airship captain at Madame Diouf's establishment. The captain, Ann-Marie St. Augustine, was a client of Creeper's mother and is known to smuggle guns for General Tubman. What Creeper didn't realize is that Ann-Marie is the child of Oshun, Oya's sister-wife. It can't be a coincidence, especially once Creeper learns the history of The Black God's Drums. The Black God's Drums are known by another name, Shango's Thunder. Shango is Oya's husband. The weapon has only been deployed once, when Dessalines unleashed it against the French to free Haiti. They won, but at what cost? The storm didn't just decimate the French, it killed so so many Haitians. And the tempêtes noires are the aftermath of Shango's Thunder almost a hundred years later. If the Confederate States were to get this weapon they would unleash it against the Union. But these soldiers aren't the only ones who know of Shango's Thunder making its way to New Orleans. The Jeannots, comprised of disaffected Confederate States soldiers who are patriots to the Old New Orleans and want to take back the city for themselves or destroy it want it as well. It is up to Creeper and Ann-Marie to ban together as sister-wives and save a city they both love.

Before I reread this book to review it, and yes, sometimes I do have to reread books to review them, I read a rather bloated critical darling that just wasn't for me. Transitioning from that epic tome to this spare tale was an awakening as to how magnificent this story is. Coming in at a quarter the word count this book's worldbuilding leaves that aforementioned critical darling in the dust. The perfection of language, the specificity of events, the richness of the storytelling left me begging for more, not begging for it to be over. P. Djèlí Clark is an author whose words sing like the masked Jeannots. But it's really the worldbuilding that is breaktaking. It will literally take your breath away. Here we have an alternative outcome to the Civil War, as in, there isn't yet an outcome. Haiti and the Caribbean are the Free Isles. What Dessalines started in 1791 had a chain reaction for the whole Caribbean. But that had a negative impact on the American Civil War. The Confederate States were going to hold onto slavery at all costs. And a war that ended in our world in 1865 is still happening twenty years later. And while many people will point to the Steampunk elements of this story, that's just the cherry on top of the cake. That's a nice decorative glace touch. But stripe this story down and it's the alternative history that just works so well and is terrifyingly believable and the characters that drive the narrative. Though what I want to point to as working so effectively is the Orisha. For myself whenever you have Gods brought across the seas I can't but help think of American Gods and Anansi, who while West African, doesn't belong to the Orisha. And the reason I always think of American Gods is because it's a concept that Neil Gaiman got right. But I feel the time has come to pass the torch, to get authentic voices to continue the stories, to write new tales. And I can't help but see how the Orisha have been embraced in literature in recent years. Just look to Tomi Adeyemi's Legacy of Orïsha trilogy that really didn't work for me. It's hard to balance the human with the divine, and P. Djèlí Clark did just that. This book should be looked to as a classic in the vein of American Gods if only so we can somehow convince P. Djèlí Clark to write more stories within this universe. He got the Orisha right folks! And that, right there, should be shouted from the tops of Les Grand Murs!