Tomi Adeyemi’s Books Are Fantasy. What They Taught Her Is Painfully Real.
With her new book, “Children of Anguish and Anarchy,” Adeyemi is wrapping up her best-selling Legacy of Orïsha series. The journey hasn’t been easy.
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Something was in the air — though Tomi Adeyemi couldn’t quite say what. It wasn’t the sweltering heat of a New York City summer, nor the perfume of the sweat that had gathered atop our skin.
“What’s your sign?” Adeyemi immediately asked me, before we even began to talk about her new book.
Aquarius, I confessed.
“Stop!” she responded. “I’m just having my own moment because you are the third Aquarius sun I have met in the past 36 hours.” Later, she learns our zodiac signs are flipped: I’m an Aquarius sun and Leo moon; she’s a Leo sun and Aquarius moon. Air and fire, fire and air.
Drama, divination, nature’s elements — all words that could easily be applied to Adeyemi’s best-selling Legacy of Orïsha series, whose third and final book, “Children of Anguish and Anarchy,” will be published on Tuesday by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers.
The series follows a young girl named Zélie who is born of magical heritage in the kingdom of Orïsha. When the series opened, Zélie and her people, the maji, had been subjugated by Orïsha’s non-magical monarchy, which stripped them of their powers, abused them and did all it could to make sure they never returned to their former glory. Over the course of the first two books, “Children of Blood and Bone” and “Children of Virtue and Vengeance,” Zélie restores magic to the maji, and in the process accidentally gives it to the monarchy too, resulting in an all-out war between them.
“Children of Anguish and Anarchy” picks up after the battle. There is a victor, yes, but it’s neither the monarchy nor the maji. Turns out King Baldyr, the leader of a foreign faction called the Skulls whose wicked aspirations for world conquest echo those of trans-Atlantic slave traders, has landed in Orïsha. He’s captured Zélie, imprisoned her on his ship and trafficked her across the seas in hopes of harnessing her magic to colonize the land. Can Zélie save herself and her people before the Skulls wipe them out entirely? Or is she too late?
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