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They killed my mother.
They took our magic.
They tried to bury us.
Now we rise.
Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls.
But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were 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 an enemy.

I’ve been meaning to read this series for such a long time, and I finally picked it up as a buddy read with my friend Courtney on our reading holiday this year. We listened to the start on audio and picked up the rest in physical format. This book is quite a chunky fantasy at over 500 pages, and it did feel daunting for both of us going in, but we quickly found it quite easy to read and not as intimidating as either of us expected.

This book is quite an intricate epic fantasy but it is YA, and felt quite accessible to read and dive in. The pacing was really well done, and I did find it quite quick to read. I must say though, it did feel very long and at times felt like a bit of a slog to get through.

I teach you to be warriors in the garden

I really liked the main characters, of which we have four and this book is told from multiple perspectives. There is two main romances, which I didn’t mind but never really connected with necessarily, they were both a bit too instant for me. I also found that because we had a number of main protagonists, there was quite a few side characters, and because of the sheer amount of names to remember, I never felt connected. There were a couple of instances where something would happen to one of the side characters, and although the main characters were affected, I didn’t feel….anything.

There is a lot crammed into these pages, and the plot was super fast paced. There was a number of times where I felt like the next part of the story would take the majority of the book, and it would then only take a couple of chapters to progress. I didn’t mind this too much, but it was a lot to take in.

so you will never be gardeners in the war.

Overall, I did enjoy this book and I will be continuing with the series. It wasn’t perfect and I did have a few annoyances, but I can see why this book gets a lot of love.

★★★★
3.5 out of 5 stars

-Beth

May your shelves forever overflow with books! ☽

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