young adult, fantasy
Children of Virtue and Vengeance picks up where the
best-selling Children of Blood and Bone left off with Zelie and her diviners
trying to overthrow the royals of Orisha in order the stop the persecution of
the maji.
I had high hopes for this sequel but it just didn’t measure
up to the original. Most of this novel involves
battles—preparing for them, staffing up for them, fighting them—and I never
love reading about battles and related strategy/players. So, that’s the first problem. But, usually,
I’ll suffer the battle scenes if the rest of the novel is worth it. This one really wasn’t. Every time it started to get interesting
(because it was focusing on characters and relationships), one of the
characters made a stupid choice or some external factor canceled the
momentum. It was extremely
frustrating. Yes, these are teenagers
and, often, teenagers do not make the wisest decisions. But when they bungle
everything up this much it’s just not so fun to read.
Virtue and vengeance?
Vengeance, most definitely. Virtue, not so much. And all vengeance all the time is not a pretty look, even
on characters I otherwise like. I think
this novel should be titled Children of Damage and Deceit. The characters have all been burned so badly
by their terrible pasts and are too immature to see past their team loyalties
to the bigger picture. Some are selfish and overly righteous; some are
impatient. All of them dismiss their
inner conscience too quickly. The result is too much in-fighting and
backstabbing. It’s painful to read,
honestly. It’s one blunder after
another. And then, it ends and both
sides end up pretty much where they were at the end of the first novel. Without forward momentum, a second novel in a
trilogy is just filler.
I always enjoy listening to Bahni Turpin narrate a
book. She’s terrific with many different
voices and great accents along with impressive acting. I give her an A for this one.
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