Book Review: Children of Virtue and Vengeance

Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi
Legacy of Orisha, Book 2

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'm so glad this is over. It took me forever to read.

The Plot
The first 60% of this book is so boring! It's just our main characters lamenting about war, wishing it didn't have to happen; or figuring out schemes (none of which were interesting) to stop the war. It was so dull I wanted to cry.
At about 75% we have a significant-ish event that happens. A good action sequence and excellent character moment. Sadly it's overshadowed, almost immediately, by the fact that the larger war is happening. And so all the impact we should feel just dissipates away. And then we're in the last 25% in which we have an inevitable larger battle.

The Ending
Like WTF? I literally don't even understand and don't care enough to bother reading the last chapter and epilogue until I do. I just don't care. If the ending is supposed to make me want to read the next book (will be third in series) then it failed horribly. I hate cheap or random endings and this is about as random as it comes. There had better be a damn good explanation, that makes sense, in book three early on or I'm likely just out.

Rushed..?
The writing style here felt very rushed to me. A couple chapters held the excitement and action that I had felt through much of book 1; but mostly it was repetitive and like someone told Tomi Adeyemi to just 'fill pages' and so she rushed to do so by putting in a bunch of boring whining from our lead characters. It's too bad as I think the emotions our characters are battling during this time could have been significant for the reader (especially a teen); instead it was just meh.

Overall
If you're hoping for romance (like in book 1) you should not bother. There is almost no romance or loving moments in Children of Virtue and Vengeance. Instead we get a lot of feelings of remorse or longing; an emphasis on betrayal (and thus Vengeance), all followed up with a heavy dose of guilt. It's bleak, but not even in an interesting way. As someone who loves dark, gothic, and despair type stories this should have worked for me; sadly the emotions were too superficial and repeated between our characters. It's like Adeyemi has one character with emotions and she split them up into four characters.
I don't know about book three... maybe I'll read it. But I certainly am not going to be all excited for it or holding my breathe. It's too bad; book one was decent and had a lot of potential. But this, book two, just about threw me into a reading slump and there's just do way I can say a story that did that was any good.

Note: I read this during week 6-7 of the covid-19 'stay at home' mandate in Canada. This may have affected my reading experience of it. However I do not believe it did. Had this been a good book it would have pulled me in as a few others have managed to do in the last 7 weeks. But in the interest of full disclosure I will be fair and advise that it's possible my own frustration and despair were in the way of enjoying this story.

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