This is what they deserve. They wanted me to be a monster. I will be the worst monster they ever created.
I was granted eARC access to Blood Scion by Deborah Falaye after attending the #FrenzyPresents YA catalogue preview in December 2021. Thank you for the opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.
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About the Book
Blood Scion
Blood Scion Book One
by Deborah Falaye
Published 8 March 2022
Harperteen
Genre: YA Fantasy, African Mythology
Page Count: 432
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
This is what they deserve. They wanted me to be a monster. I will be the worst monster they ever created.
Fifteen-year-old Sloane can incinerate an enemy at will—she is a Scion, a descendant of the ancient Orisha gods.
Under the Lucis’ brutal rule, her identity means her death if her powers are discovered. But when she is forcibly conscripted into the Lucis army on her fifteenth birthday, Sloane sees a new opportunity: to overcome the bloody challenges of Lucis training, and destroy them from within.
Sloane rises through the ranks and gains strength but, in doing so, risks something greater: losing herself entirely, and becoming the very monster that she ahbors.
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Following one girl’s journey of magic, injustice, power, and revenge, this deeply felt and emotionally charged debut from Deborah Falaye, inspired by Yoruba-Nigerian mythology, is a magnetic combination of A Song of Wraiths and Ruin and Daughter of Smoke and Bone that will utterly thrill and capture readers.
My Review
My Rating: 4 Stars
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I was granted eARC access to Blood Scion by Deborah Falaye after attending the #FrenzyPresents YA catalogue preview in December 2021. Thank you for the opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.
Sloane is a powerful young Scion, descendant of gods, born into magnificent and dangerous magic that will spell her doom if the wrong people discover her secret. Unfortunately, she gets recruited into the country’s military where she’ll be expected to kill or be killed, and kill others just like herself. Is she strong enough?
Blood Scion is a powerful, fast-paced, and slightly horrifying (in a good way) book based on Nigerian mythology that also echos the very real horrors of abducted war children in many African nations today. It’s raw, it’s messy, and it’s very sincere. This book is not for the weak!
I think this book does an amazing job of taking fantastic sources of real world inspiration and crafting a story that hasn’t been told in quite the same way before. I love that we’re getting so many Black girls who overcome the odds and change the world sort of stories in mainstream YA these days, and this is a great story even if you want to consider the racial commentary, too. (But please, consider the commentary! This magic may not truly exist in the real world but this plot echos situations that really still happen in the real world.)
Where this loses a star for me, making it a 4 rather than a 5, seems to be the same stumbling points I’m seeing other sub-5 reviews comment on. Less important: the romance just doesn’t work. More important: the maturity level of all of these teenage “child” soldiers feels off. Yes, trauma in childhood absolutely changes you. As someone with C-PTSD from childhood trauma I can attest that people always told me I was a 30 year old in a child’s body, and you really do pick up survival skills and modify your behaviour to do the adult things that need to be done. That doesn’t truly mean you start to think and act like an adult in every way, though. There’s a phrase in psychology: “Never a child, always a child.” People who are forced to grow up too fast will never grow up in certain ways (or at least not until they’ve had decades to process, heal, and work on themselves.) We’ve got teenagers here who become adults in every meaningful aspect in a short amount of time and I don’t quite buy it.
Overall this is an amazing book, I highly recommend it, and I’m eager to read more from this author!
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