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It's bothering me so bad that there's not enough people being furious about Amandla Stenberg being cast as Amari when anyone who read the damn book knows that her having a dark complexion compared to the rest of her family is the first thing we learn about her character.

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children of blood and bone cast pushing 40 and not a single Yoruba woman in the entire cast… oh okay 👍🏾

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People are getting way too comfortable with the erasure of monoracial black girls in media.

Tomi Adeyemi is a JOKE for creating Amari’s character who is described as having dark copper colored skin just to only list light-skin biracial women to play her.

It’s so disappointing that whenever there’s colorism within casting in a book-to-movie adaptation the author always defends colorism especially a book with a PLOT that involves colorism.

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I haven’t said anything about it on here but many have said the exact same thing: how is your character described, in your own words, as having dark copper skin. Faces colorism and fatphobia from her mother…

This is official art you had commissioned that’s literally in books…

And yet you cast Amandla to play her saying that she’s exactly how you envisioned Amari???

Tomi don’t piss me off. You’re rightfully getting dragged from all sides, but I will say this to my fellow Black ppl. Be respectful to our Nigerian siblings during this conversation cuz Children of Blood and Bone is using their culture, Yoruba culture to be more specific, in a fantasy setting. Some parts of the conversation we have no say in cuz we aren’t Nigerian and we can only support them and boost their opinions. I will also say that wishing for the movie to flop does more harm than good especially in our current climate in the US. Imma still call out the clear colorism and lies that were told but I also want this movie to do at least ok in the box office cuz we know exactly what will be said if it doesn’t do well and we also know what will happen afterwards. Not saying you have to go see it but just be mindful.

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okay so that children of blood and bone cast reveal…..

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Sincere question why does the "Legacy of Orïsha" trilogy lack a fandom? Like yeah, I see people praising the books, and I myself enjoy them (have not read #3 yet) , but there is not a huge following, not many fanfic or fan art) when the 1st book came out I was looking forward to seeing a new fandom grow but it never happen. I wonder what is going to happen when the movies come out?

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so....do i make a post about other (re: better) magic school/wizard books or what?

because i have strong opinions!

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reading lessons in chemistry and crying rn

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i’m sure i’m not the first to say something like this, but let me tell you about my poc-passing-as-white jay gatsby headcanon!!

for some background, in the 1920s there was an interesting shift regarding (white) skin tones. previously, tans were viewed as a sign that a person worked out in the fields, and therefore a trademark of the lower class. however, slowly after the industrial revolution, it increasingly became a representation of luxury, since the rich upper class would have the time to lounge about and sunbathe at their leisure.

i say all this to show that a poc gatsby would have the ostensible class and wealth for a tan, which would ‘excuse’ a slightly browner skin tone in the public eye.

(the 20s was also the setting of passing by nella larsen, so that’s neat.)

in my vision, he’s biracial (maybe his mother was black & his father was a german immigrant) with skin light enough to pass for white.

the fact that nick states that gatsby keeps his hair neatly groomed and cut might be to prevent it from curling up.

additionally, i think it could contrast tom’s white supremacy & his fear of poc social progress.

it would also create a deeper divide between gatsby and daisy, and once again the contrast between him and tom. in my mind, daisy wouldn’t know about it until the point where tom reveals everything about gatsby’s bootlegging etc. with jay revealing it to her in the car ride back (oops then she hits myrtle).

then, when she chooses tom and the life of comfort, wealth, status, etc that their marriage offers, she also rejects not only gatsby’s new money but also his race.

it’s a lot more thematically significant for the american dream as well—it’s still unattainable and essentially tainted by capitalism, and it also emphasizes that it’s restricted to the white upper class. social mobility only becomes available to gatsby when he disguises his racial identity.

similarly, it fits with gatsby’s identity reconstruction—the quintessential american is white, rich, and educated.

daisy and tom have that ticket into society because they have that inherent thing that he will never have—pedigree, in both class and race. that’s something that even nick has.

(in my mind, he tells nick all about it the night before he dies & nick understands as best he can and doesn’t think less of him, because it further highlights the differences between his & gatsby’s relationship v. gatsby’s relationship with daisy; namely, the transparency -> acceptance give-and-take that he and daisy never had. because of having to hide himself from daisy in order to maintain her affection, he builds an expectation that he must be someone that he is not as well as developing a transactional definition of love (he gives, and people love him as long as he can continue to give) in order to be loved. therefore, nick’s immediate curiosity and fascination with who he truly is is foreign to him. not to get too into their dynamic lmao i just think it’s really interesting.)

finally, the very last part where nick is sitting and looking at the bay and thinking about the first immigrants and their dreams and how gatsby embodied the purity and naivety of those dreams is further exemplified by his racial ‘otherness.’

and there’s,,, technically nothing in the book to explicitly refute this from what i remember!

(n.b.: it has been a hot second since i’ve read tgg, so lmk if i’ve got anything wrong!)

[davyreads]

[davyreads]

Children of Anguish and Anarchy Book Review

Children of Anguish and Anarchy Book Review by Tomi Adeyemi

This book was so horrible. 

No one is more disappointed than me to say that. 

I’ve gone to two of Tomi Adeyemi’s book signings, including a recent one for Children of Anguish and Anarchy.

Tomi Adeyemi herself is absolutely wonderful. She’s so intelligent, hilarious, addictively charming, and can work a room like no other. The book signing was fantastic. Too bad the book couldn’t hold up to the event itself. 

Children of Anguish and Anarchy follows as the third and last installment of the Legacy of Orisha trilogy, but doesn’t read like that at all.

Other than having the same four main characters of Tzain, Zelie, Amari, and Inan, nothing about the book concludes any issue, plot story, or character development from the previous two novels. 

A completely new villain is introduced, someone we haven't heard about as a reader in the last two books whatsoever, and obliterates any of the conflict and tension that Adeyemi worked so hard to build in her previous stories. 

Gone is the tension and literally hundreds of years of in-fighting between the Maji and the monarchy, gone is the civil war and its repercussions on Orisha, gone is even one of the main characters from the last novel, Roen, who was a significant love interest for Zelie and who has been completely disappeared in this new book all together (like, what???). 

It was incredibly lazy writing to wipe away everything the first two books created in order to “unite” against this new enemy. The sentiment is nice, but it’s not the finale we wanted or needed. 

I desired answers to Amari and Zelie’s broken friendship, closure to the Inan and Roen love triangle, a verdict on how Orisha would rebuild and who would rule. 

We get none of that. 

Instead Zelie and the others spend half their time in the book on a ship with very strong slavery parallels, and the other half in the introduced land of New Gaia.

While I thought the descriptions of New Gaia were beautiful (albeit very similar to Avatar), I was dissatisfied because the whole series at this point has been focused on Orisha and Orisha’s problems, not New Gaia and not the Skulls. 

While the plot was bad and aggrieving, the characters were even worse. 

None of the characters were interesting. They were carbon copies of each other in which all they talked about was avenging their fallen Orishan people, killing the Skulls, and protecting loved ones.

Rinse and repeat. It was boring as hell to delve into four different characters’ minds only to find that they all sounded exactly the same. 

I often had to go back to the start of the chapter to tell whose internal thoughts I was reading because they were so interchangeable and self-righteous and dull.  It is never a good sign when you can’t automatically tell who’s POV you’re reading based on their internal dialogue and tone. 

Lastly, the pacing of the book was atrocious. Everything happened so goddamn fast that I felt like I never had the chance to properly digest or internalize anything.

Oh they’re on a ship? Moving on from that. Zelie got some sort of medallion shoved into her chest?? Moving on. Wait, Maji and Titans and the monarchy are all working together after two full books of them killing each other??? Five pages and it’s done with. 

It was outrageous and insulting. 

The pacing made everything feel shallow, unimportant, and unnecessary. More than most of the plot were action scenes, while difficult to write and interesting in their own right, in this book it was so repetitive that characters killing other characters 90% of the time became egregiously tedious. 

And speaking of the action, I also found it incredibly violent and graphic for a YA book. As someone who is not a fan of gore and blood, this book had so many explicit details for no reason other than being gratuitous.

For example, at one point Zelie shoves a chicken bone through someone’s cheek. I found it repulsive and it was also incessant. 

I know some people can handle brutality, but I can’t, and found it a huge turn off and made me dislike the book so much more, especially as this was a majority of the book to boot. 

Disappointment can’t even contain my full feelings for this story. For such a wonderful trilogy to succumb to such a terrible end is a tragedy. I wish the best for Tomi Adeyemi and success for her future, but I will not read another book by her again. 

Score: 2/10

Recommendation: Read Children of Blood and Bone, a magical story that will inspire and entertain you. Read Children of Virtue and Vengeance if you really need something else, but even this book I wouldn’t recommend picking up.

Do not, I repeat, do not read Children of Anguish and Anarchy. It will leave you feeling dismayed and disheartened beyond redemption.

Bonus: Here's me, my fiance, and Tomi Adeyemi at her book signing!

[davyreads]

trying to read but thinking about how disappointing children of anguish and anarchy was and how my review of it still doesn’t encompass the despair i feel at this being the final entry

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reading got for the first time and idk much abt the series except big events but not the events that lead to them and such, and lemme say this now……… i am SHIT SCARED for ned’s execution and the red wedding OH MY GOD

[davyreads]

review of nisha sharma’s the letters we keep

a story of beautifully written love letters; love letters to one another and to the south asian community, that sharma holds close to her heart.

"there is no sunshine without you here, my bachcha,"

the letters we keep follows ravi kumar, nepo baby extraordinaire, and jessie ahuja, hardworking scholarship student, as they try and unravel the mystery of the legend of davidson tower, where it is said that two star-crossed lovers suddenly vanished in a fire. nisha sharma details the struggles faced by the south asian community, and how those hurdles seem to transcend time. however, so does the love that these characters have for one another, and we follow these two parallel love stories as they grow closer and closer to not just each other, but to the truth.

keep reading for my personal thoughts (there will be spoilers)

this story follows hartceller students, jessie ahuja, a hardworking freshman, and ravi kumar, a senior who is also part of the very well-known kumar family and who is deemed by jessie a “nepo baby.” though their relationship starts off very rocky, they eventually call a truce so that they can unearth the secrets of the davidson tower at their university, since one of the campus legends is that a south asian woman and her boyfriend disappeared without a trace after the tower was set alight. with the help of some letters, jessie and ravi slowly start to unravel the story of these long-lost lovers as well as develop their budding romance.

hartceller is set up, from the beginning, as almost a hotspot for south asian students, and its place in the rich history of south asians in america is, in my opinion, very well done. sharma shows us how hartceller served as, to an extent, a safe haven for south asians just arriving in the us and allowed them an opportunity at higher education that were few and far between for this demographic. it was refreshing to read about indian characters and the different ethnicities and cultures of india, as well as have a small glimpse into the unique culture and identity carved out by the first migrants; i felt lucky and excited to have this chance to see it, considering i am neither american nor south asian.

another aspect of the book that i really enjoyed was the relationship between jessie and her father, and my favourite quote from the book actually comes from one of their interactions, because it is truly so beautiful to read. it is clear through jessie’s diligence that everything she does is out of love and service, and a debt she feels she owes to her parents for all that they have done for her to get to the point that she is at now. it is through these interactions that it becomes easier to see this story as a love letter in and of itself to the south asian community and, really, the forefathers of any community who took those first fateful steps to procure a future for generations to come in a land that promised hope and success. this difference between jessie and ravi is clear as ravi’s family has more established roots than jessie; he is wealthy, with a powerful family as a safety net should he fail, and his name automatically draws attention and respect, things that jessie (and her parents) have had to work at from the moment they got to america. the differences between the two main characters and their social classes are visible and you are able, to an extent, to understand them.

all of this being said, i did not enjoy this book. romance is already a genre that i do not immediately gravitate towards, and i am trying to read beyond young adult fiction, so once it was picked by my book club, i knew this book was never really going to be a good fit for me. the book feels very ya-esque, which obviously is not surprising, but it was to the point that it constantly took me out of the story, which already felt quite flimsy anyway. the book is paced quite quickly, and this seems like an instance of “insta love”, which made it even more difficult to read, because everything just felt a bit incredulous and that truly means something because i really enjoy books with fantastical elements to them. none of this was helped by the fact that these characters were not particularly interesting, and they fell flat at times. they had very strict archetypes that, once you get to my age (the haggard, wizened age of 20) and you’ve read as extensively as i have (wattpad, tumblr and ao3), get very tired and boring, especially when executed in a basic manner, as was the case for the characters of this novel.

let's first discuss insta love which is basically a very fast-paced romantic relationship (insta being short for instant, i assume) and it’s something of a universally despised trope; it is unrealistic, annoying and, honestly, a tad lazy. it is also present in this novel, and for me, it made the reading experience very frustrating because ravi seems to be immediately captivated by jessie, but we don’t actually understand why? he’s always talking about how surprised he is by how she can’t see what he sees, but what do you see, ravi? we are only told about his crush; we are never truly shown actual reasons for this sudden obsession. also, before reading this book, i had just finished reading the twilight saga for the first time, and there’s a point in the novel when ravi admits that he followed jessie home after their first meeting, and i got immediate edward cullen flashbacks. we as readers don’t actually know why he’s so taken by her, and we never really find out; this tends to be a feature of insta love – because everything happens on an accelerated scale, everything is underdeveloped, and i can just tell that this book was marketed as a “he falls first” book. this love story was not convincing, and it isn’t just ravi and jessie who suffer from this, but also the lovers whose letters they are reading. it’s worrying that the love story that brings our main characters together is weak and uninteresting. the “mystery” isn’t particularly captivating and over the course of the book, i didn’t actually find myself caring about their story. something else that weakens their story, as well as ravi and jessie’s, and therefore the novel as a whole, is that it’s kind of nonsensical? ravi and jessie find letters sent by the anonymous woman to her lover and they examine them for a class assignment, but they never once think about the possibility that the recipient would also have written back (those letters appear at the end to solve the flimsy inevitable angst that develops, quite weakly, between ravi and jessie). they try and tell this very old story and they don’t realise that they only have half of it, which really bugged me because it was the first question i asked upon realising we only had letters from one person. the whole thing felt quite shaky and it didn’t make for a fun read.

something else that hampered the reading experience was the characters themselves. we are repeatedly force-fed the idea of jessie as the “unattractive nerd who’s actually really hot” and ravi the “misunderstood bad boy nepo baby with a heart of gold who really has a passion for the arts and who actually has it just as hard” and this is something we are consistently told rather than shown, and it is drilled home so incessantly that it gets annoying and then angering. these characters seem to exist around the love story they share with each other and it’s aggravating to read because we don’t really know anything about these characters; even worse is that we don’t really want to know anything about them – they’re so uninteresting and boring and we don’t get why they even like each other. the characters and the story in which they appear are both so underdeveloped and you don’t really care about them. as i mentioned earlier, my favourite relationship in this whole book is the one that jessie shares with her father; the love they share is so tender and unhindered and so raw, it’s truly beautiful to witness. i wish as much care was put into ravi and jessie’s relationship; there seemed to be a preoccupation with hitting all the marks of a typical young adult romance (including the sex scenes which come out of literally nowhere) and the story suffers because of this strict adherence. you also see it in the inner thoughts of jessie and ravi, where they seem to constantly reiterate their personal standpoints in a somewhat unnatural way, and this only hurts the reading experience.

i feel it necessary to bring up here that this book also makes attempts at an enemies-to-lovers storyline with ravi and jessie, and it is so poorly executed. i would say that this is something that plagues many inclusions of this trope nowadays in some mainstream novels because the rivalry is either so laughable that it’s not serious or so severe that it’s unbelievable that these characters are actually breathing the same air right now. ravi and jessie are the former, and i don’t even think whatever they had before dating can be called a rivalry because like them and their story and the letters and the book as a whole, it is unconvincing. you’re not rooting for these characters, let alone rooting for them to get together because they are boring, as is their “rivalry” which ultimately comes from them liking the same study room in the library, and on a deeper level, jessie has some pre-conceived notions about ravi since he’s a nepo baby, a term that’s only used 6 times in the novel but that’s still 5 times too many.

something else that was annoying was the attempt to make it seem as if ravi has it just as hard as jessie which, let’s be real, is not the case.

“just because her life had been different from his didn’t mean that it was less than or worse off than his had been. if anything, it was better. she had people who appreciated and loved her for who she was, and as cheesy as it sounded, that was something that money couldn’t buy." – chapter 13 – ravi

what would’ve been really interesting to see, and which would’ve really brought the theme of class disparity to the forefront, is if jessie spends most of the novel, preparing herself for an interview for an internship that she really wants, she spends every waking moment padding up her cv and getting experience. she manages to score an interview and she prepares herself as best she can, only for ravi’s family to secure the position for him with little to no work on his end. that would have created a real tension between them, one that’s understandable, palpable and convincing and furthers the themes present in the book. the story doesn’t delve deep enough on any aspect and that really sucks.

imagine my surprise when i found out it was apparently modelled after jane austen’s pride and prejudice.

[davyreads]

review of tomi adeyemi’s children of anguish and anarchy

zélie confronts her final enemy, the king of a foreign land who hunts her heart.

"i'm not ready for our story to end."

children of anguish and anarchy is the final entry in tomi adeyemi's legacy of orisha trilogy, and it was preceded by commercial and critical successes children of blood and bone and children of virtue and vengeance. this final book continues where the second book left off, and readers are reunited with zélie, tzain, amari and inan, as they fight to free their people and save the life of an unknown girl. the plight of the maji has always been reminiscent of the struggles of the black community, but this is made even clearer and more visceral in this final installment.

keep reading for my personal thoughts (there will be spoilers)

the story follows zélie as she frees the maji from the captivity of those known only as the skulls, for the masks that they wear over their faces. after freeing her people, during the process of which an artefact from the skulls is embedded into her chest, zélie searches for a mystery girl and aims to save her life and protect her from the skulls and their monstrous power. whilst she does this with tzain and amari, inan returns with the rest of the maji to orisha to warn the rest of their people of the threat posed by the skulls. upon returning, they find their people still at war with one another, and they very quickly understand that in order to stand a chance against their new foes, they need to stop their infighting and unite. meanwhile, zélie, tzain and amari come across an island of people with different and unique gifts, and they find the girl they have been looking for. there are many time jumps, and a sacrifice made by one of our protagonists, but by the end, the maji and zélie’s new friend, mae’e, defeat the skulls.

the aspect of the trilogy that i really enjoyed, and that i have always enjoyed, has been the worldbuilding, and this final book carries on that legacy, and expands it to different continents. we’re introduced to new worlds and new abilities and, briefly, new systems of magic, with references to different cultures and mythologies. this is something that has never been an issue for this series, and i appreciate that this is something we get to enjoy to the very end of it.

another thing is that, as i said in the small blurb i wrote, the references to struggles faced by the black community from outside the community and within it have always been part and parcel of the series, and these themes have driven the story in an authentic way that allows readers to relate to the characters. i truly appreciate these inclusions and it helps the series maintain a flavour of what initially drew readers in to begin with. unfortunately, this final entry was a major disappointment to me, and it let me down greatly. the issues that i will discuss are the pacing, the characters, the story itself and its place in the trilogy.

i knew almost immediately that something wasn’t right, because the pacing was quite fast, and it felt abnormal. around 100 pages into the book, our characters have already staged a successful revolt without powers (mostly; with the exception of tzain, curiously); in any of the other books in the trilogy, this might not have really been an issue but since this book is shorter than the other 2, this is ultimately less than a third of the way through, and with the way the rest of the story is written and paced, this speed feels unnecessary, and it doesn’t feel like there was any point to this, because there was no clear compromise on any other aspect that could possibly explain this. there are many time jumps and skips and whilst these are good, and should be used, this just left the book feeling a bit spotty. when i think of my experience reading the book, there aren’t any actual gaps in my memory, it’s just that the timing of the novel is really bad, as much as it pains me to say. we don’t see any actual training for the characters, with the exception of a singular scene for zélie and tzain, if they can really be called that, but this takes me to my next grievance: the characters.

there is no development, and certain characters just straight up disappear (roën is nowhere to be found…?). the characters don’t change whatsoever. zélie is still zélie, amari is still amari (except she’s explicitly queer now, which i will discuss), and inan is still inan. tzain doesn’t really change either, he just gets a weapon (made from his own rib, which is pretty cool, i have to say), and whilst i can appreciate that he has felt powerless throughout the series as he has had to wait on the sidelines whilst the main action happens, this almost comes out of nowhere, and it felt like there was no buildup. i might even go as far as saying that there might have been a few out-of-character moments for some characters (inan consistently making terrible decisions even though he’s the closest we have to a military tactician was annoying to witness). this doesn’t seem as big of an issue as other aspects that i will discuss further, but it’s aggravating that with all these new threats and discoveries, everyone stays the same. inan sacrificing himself at the end of the novel felt like a very cheap way to shock the reader rather than it feeling like a necessary part of the story; in the book, it’s explained (kind of terribly) that inan must exchange his breath of life for zélie’s, and it is for that reason that inan dies and zélie lives, however it felt incredibly cheap and weak because nothing has changed about inan over the course of the novel to truly make us feel emotional at his death. it felt a bit like the ending of netflix’s chilling adventures of sabrina when nick scratch kills himself because it felt less like a needed part of the book and more like an attempt at shocking the viewers. i also think the book suffers from having too many perspectives, and i truly feel that tzain’s perspective was insignificant, especially seeing as with his point of view, we still know close to nothing about his training and what his experience in new gaia is like. this was really disappointing to read and very very annoying.

as i mentioned earlier, amari is explicitly confirmed to be queer, and many have read her as such since the first book, a popular pairing being zélie x amari. however, as much as i love queer stories, specifically black and african queer stories, this felt very lacklustre. amari meets mae’e and they pretty much fall in love instantly, with a short and uninteresting throwaway line from tzain where he remarks that amari looks at mae’e the same way she used to look at him (pg. 270). personally, this wasn’t very satisfying, and i can’t tell if it’s because the romance itself wasn’t convincing or if, in the context of the rest of the novel, this was just disappointing. the villain of this book is also very uninteresting and it got to a point whilst i was reading that i was waiting for the book to end because i felt so unstimulated by it, which really upsets me.

my final grievance that i will discuss is how well this novel works as an end to the trilogy, and the story itself. in short, i think this book was an incredibly disappointing and dissatisfying end to a beloved trilogy, and it truly hurts to say that, because there aren’t many times where i will see my culture written with such love and written so beautifully. this trilogy, in my opinion, really should have been a duology, and it should’ve ended after children of virtue and vengeance, perhaps with an epilogue that explored how their world was changed by the return of magic and how they are working to rebuild their country. this final instalment was so inconsequential, and really did not change much about the world of the trilogy, and because we were being introduced to so many new things in the shortest book of the trilogy, everything felt a bit out of place and time. nothing felt earned or deserved, and the only death that really moved me was one that didn’t even appear in the book (i miss you, imani). the epilogue was also very weak, in my opinion, because whilst it promises the hope of rebuilding lives and homes and orisha as a country, i think it would have been better placed at the end of the second book as it would have allowed the series to end on a high note.

[davyreads]

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