Review: Children of Anguish and Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi

Blurb:

Brace for the storm of Tomi Adeyemi’s #1 New York Times-bestselling Legacy of Orïsha series finale.

New allies rise.
The Blood Moon nears.
Zélie faces her final enemy.
The king who hunts her heart.

When Zélie seized the royal palace that fateful night, she thought her battles had come to an end. The monarchy had finally fallen. The maji had risen again. Zélie never expected to find herself locked in a cage and trapped on a foreign ship. Now warriors with iron skulls traffic her and her people across the seas, far from their homeland.

Then everything changes when Zélie meets King Baldyr, her true captor, the ruler of the Skulls, and the man who has ravaged entire civilizations to find her. Baldyr’s quest to harness Zélie’s strength sends Zélie, Amari, and Tzain searching for allies in unknown lands.

But as Baldyr closes in, catastrophe charges Orïsha’s shores. It will take everything Zélie has to face her final enemy and save her people before the Skulls annihilate them for good.

Review:

I have a lot of love for Legacy of Orïsha. It was my gateway series to every single fantasy book I’ve picked up since finishing Children of Blood and Bone and Children of Virtue and Vengeance before the world ended in 2020. All that is to say, I had high hopes and uncharacteristic optimism for the whole series which have been left a little bit dashed. 

A quick recap for those who have forgotten because it has been a little while: Zélie brought magic back and in doing so also awoke dormant powers in non-maji so there was a civil war there. She allied with Roën who is trying to help her before she’s captured in Children of Virtue and Vengeance and then Zélie wakes up on a boat. 

Despite the 4½ year wait for Children of Anguish and Anarchy, it picks up immediately from her waking up on this boat. We quickly find out that Amari, and Tzain are on the boat as well. “But what about Inan?” Don’t worry. That is also quickly resolved. “Ok and what about Roën?” I have absolutely no idea. Where is he, Tomi?! He seemed reasonably important by the end of Children of Virtue and Vengeance so where has he gone? Having finished the book, I still do not have an answer for this. And truthfully, it was just one of the many things that left me wanting more.  

I don’t have a lot of complaints about their boat jailbreak. If history has taught us anything it’s that desperate people will find a way to escape or just absolutely go for broke because it’s better than sitting and waiting to die. If you go into the first part with that mentality, it makes it easier to believe. I do have complaints about the fact we spent like 20-something chapters leading up to it and it centred on “We’re going to get out of here and take back Orïsha” followed by almost none of the book actually happening in Orïsha. Before even hitting Part II, this felt like a different series compared to the first two books from Tomi. 

Because so much of it doesn’t take place in Orïsha and we have almost no contact with the characters that do make it back, we lose the maji that made the series so good. Honestly, I’d even say we lose what makes Zélie so dynamic. Not to mention the powers that she spends the last two books championing are suddenly removed but here’s this new invasive, almost parasitic, power for this totally new enemy that you can fight with this new ally. And don’t get me wrong, New Gaīa sounds cool as heckie but I wanted a conclusion for Orïsha, not a brand new landscape. That’s also totally ignoring Amari and her new crush which somehow overshadows everything that has gone on between her and Tzain, and Tzain becoming some super warrior over the course of a few weeks in a mostly unseen training montage. Like a version of the Eye of the Tiger scenes, except it starts with the opening notes then he’s just on the steps jumping for joy with a weapon he pulls out of his skin. 

Would I have loved a New Gaīa story and plot? Definitely, but as a follow on book maybe. Like once Orïsha finished their story and maybe we revisited the world to see more of it with these new characters. I just don’t feel like we got a conclusion to Children of Blood and Bone and Children of Virtue and Vengeance. Despite rotating through the same four POVs as the previous two books, Zélie, Inan, Amari, and Tzain felt like bystanders in this story. There is also the fact the big final confrontation felt so rushed and all over the place. 

So essentially you’ve got a plot that doesn’t make any sense now because we don’t know these enemies from either of the previous two books and somehow they’re more dangerous than the war between maji and titans, which was left unfinished at the end of Virtue and Vengeance. 

You’ve got the maji with a goal to get back and protect Orïsha, which we only briefly spend any time back in, and the only thing really happens is Inan giving a speech and demonstration of the new threat that makes everyone on both sides put aside their hate (which also seems absolutely wild to me. Like if you rounded up my family and had them killed, there is no way I’d let that just go cause we face a “bigger threat”. I’ll face them after I’ve sorted you out and say ‘hi’ to my family when you see them). 

After that, you’ve got all of the prep or confrontations or whatever happening off scene and we don’t see anyone in Orïsha again until the maji and titans are all working together at the end to defeat the skulls, because they definitely weren’t in a civil war against one another for the whole of Virtue and Vengeance. That’s water under the bridge….that they burnt down… 

And why do we not get any of this? Because we spend almost all our time in a new landscape and with a whole new cast that for some reason takes the complete centre stage. All of which left me feeling like a kid holding a kite in a rainstorm despite having the best time getting ready to fly the kite outside. I also massively hope some of the bigger plot holes that other people have commented on are addressed before the film version is out in the world because I cannot face this let down on a big screen. It’s not quite the literary equivalent of M. Night Shyamalan’s version of Avatar: The Last Airbender but after the wait and so much hype, it is feeling very similar.

TL;DR:

More like a stand alone story than closing out the trilogy.

Plot points unanswered, old characters went missing and a cast of new characters take the focus.

The book we got vs the one we all wanted.