Children of Blood and Bone

Children of Blood and Bone is a young adult fantasy novel by the Nigerian-American writer Tomi Adeyemi, published in 2018 and the first book of her Legacy of Orisha trilogy. It follows Zelie Adebola, whose mother was killed when magic was taken out of her country.

Orisha used to run on magic: the Burners made fire, the Tiders moved water, and Zelie's mother called souls. After a raid on the maji the king's soldiers took all of that away, and Zelie grows up in a country where being a diviner is dangerous by itself. When she is given the chance to restore the magic, she takes it, and the journey that follows is made with a runaway princess and a young man she has reason to distrust.

Adeyemi builds the novel from West African material and writes it at a fast pace, and its themes are oppression and resistance rather than the mechanics of the magic alone. It was her debut, and it was followed by two further volumes, with the journey in this book setting up the conflict that the rest of the trilogy carries.