It has probably been the most underhyped series finale of all time, or at least of this year. Finally, after 4.5 years of waiting, the final installment of Tomi Adeyemi’s “Legacy of Orïsha” series, Children of Anguish and Anarchy, has been published last week. Personally, i loved Children of Blood and Bone, Adeyemi’s debut and first book in this series when I read it back in 2018. However, I felt majorly let down by the second book, so was not really eagerly awaiting this final book in the trilogy. Luckily I have a Storytel suscription, and when randomly scrolling I found the audiobook for this. I actually already forgot about this book’s publication, but somehow I was still curious. Was this worth the long, long wait? Spoiler alert: no and I’m not sugarcoating anything. Just being brutally honest.

About the book

Children of Anguish and Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi
Series: Legacy of Orïsha #3
Published by Henry Holt & Co. on June 25, 2024
Pages: 368
ISBN: 9781432872571
Genres: Fantasy, Young adult

New allies rise.
The Blood Moon nears.
Zélie faces her final enemy.
The king who hunts her heart.

When Zelie seized the royal palace that fateful night, she thought her battles had come to an end. The monarchy had finally fallen. The maji had risen again. Zélie never expected to find herself locked in a cage and trapped on a foreign ship. Now warriors with iron skulls traffic her and her people across the seas, far from their homeland.

Then everything changes when Zélie meets King Baldyr, her true captor, the ruler of the Skulls, and the man who has ravaged entire civilizations to find her. Baldyr’s quest to harness Zélie’s strength sends Zélie, Amari, and Tzain searching for allies in unknown lands.

But as Baldyr closes in, catastrophe charges Orïsha’s shores. It will take everything Zélie has to face her final enemy and save her people before the Skulls annihilate them for good.

My review

Expectations

Since I’ve read the previous book in the end of 2019, my reading preferences have changed heaps and I gained more reading experience, I wasn’t expecting anything from this novel. I rated the first book 5 stars back then, although that would have been different right now. The second book was already a 3-star read, because I was so incredibly disappointed. Now, all those years later, the final book came out and that’s honestly the dead of a series. Especially for Young Adult, because of the short-lived attention span of today’s YA readers. Nowadays, romance and romantasy seem more popular than traditional YA (at least that’s what I notice) and many yA readers from back then have ggrown up and outgrown this genre. Myself included. So, I was just hoping for the best, but I didn’t expect this book to be another 5-star read again.

Characters

We return to Zélie, Amari, Inan and Tsain. I didn’t feel the urge to reread the previous books, so I can’t remember anything about them and their goals, let alone their relations to eachother. I just couldn’t remember who was loyal to who and everything. This time, all four of them get their own POV. The other books have been multiple POV as well, but I don’t believe all four get a voice there. However, where this narration provides more depth to the characters most often, this time it just didn’t. The characters fell flat. I remember Zélie possessing power, but it was so different now. Also, it felt like none of these characters undergo any growth compared to the previous books. They’re just there to fill up an equally underwhelming plotline, I will come back to that later because I have something to say about that as well. Even New characters were poorly introduced and written, I didn’t understand where they came from and what their role was in this story. Also, they fell flat to me, just like our familiar faces did.

Writing

Whereas especially the first book has great writing, it went all downhill from there. Adeyemi didn’t manage to captivate me with her writing style. I saw the potential at first and was really curious for more, but now it felt like lazy and rushed. It felt like she just had to finish the series because of a book deal and not because she actually wanted to invest time in it. The writing falls flat. The chapters are short, which doesn’t do the POV switching any good because the switches come way too fast. Also, the different languages used, without any explanation, are really distracting because it just doesn’t make sense. Nor does the world building. I was happy to see the characters travelling out of Orïsha for a change, but the world beyond didn’t make any sense. It just came out of nowhere and I have no clue about how these islands are connected. I couldn’t picture this at all.

Plot

I promised to get back to the plotline, so here i am. Warning, I have nothing nice to say about this either. Because what the heck was this?! It felt like this was so different from the previous books and there was no link. There were hints to the first book, but not much to the second. Zélie and her allies seized the palace, but where did the Skulls come from? How did the Maji end up caged on their ship? And what do they want? I had no clue, not even after I finished the book. I never got intrigued and therefore never gained the will to understand anything. It just all felt so out of place that I was wondering what this book is adding to the series. So much is lacking, such as depth and world/character building. It’s just a plot to finish a series, without making much sense. And why is one of the characters queer all of a sudden? I don’t have any problems with queer characters, but it felt so rushed and just there to tick the diversity boxes. Especially because this wasn’t mentioned before. As you can see, I have so many questions and they will remain unanswered forever. The audiobook narration was yet another struggle, but that’s personal since English is not my first language. The narrator did the best job she possibly could on this book, but she uses a strong African accent. It fits the story perfectly, but it’s not ideal for me. Brisith and American English I understand fine, but with other accents I have to focus twice as hard to understand the words. This was definitely the case here.

Final thoughts

After waiting so long for Children of Anguish and Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi, I’m sorry to say that this is definitely the worst book I’ve read in 2024 so far. It was so shallow, literally everything fell flat and nothing made sense. The long wait is definitely the dead of this series and I’m glad I didn’t waste nearly €12, because that’s how much the ebook costs. To me, Children of Blood and Bone either should have remained a stand alone since that book was good and refreshing at the time, or Adeyemi should have finished this series much quicker. For me, this series finale is a major letdown and absolutely not worth the wait.