Tomi Adeyemi Q&A + Complete Legacy of Orisha series
Author photo by Tomi Adeyemi
Explore a stunning world of dark magic and danger in the West African-inspired fantasy series.
Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic before a ruthless king ordered all maji killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Now Zélie fights to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy while struggling to control her powers—and her growing feelings for an enemy…
“Adeyemi keeps it fresh with an all-black cast of characters, a meaningful emphasis on fighting for justice, a complex heroine saving her own people, and a brand of magic made more powerful by the strength of heritage and ancestry. Perfect for fans of the expansive fantasy worlds of Leigh Bardugo, Daniel José Older, and Sabaa Tahir.”—Booklist
Named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people, Tomi Adeyemi is a Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Nigerian-American writer and storyteller. After graduating from Harvard University with an honors degree in English literature, she studied West African mythology, religion, and culture in Salvador, Brazil. Her first novel, Children of Blood and Bone, debuted at #1 on The New York Times Bestseller list and is being developed into a movie by Disney’s Fox & Lucasfilm. Its highly anticipated sequel, Children of Virtue and Vengeance, also debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list.
When she’s not working or playing with puppies, Tomi can be found teaching creative writing at thewritersroadmap.net. In 2020, she was named one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in Media, and her website has been named one of the 101 best websites for writers by Writer’s Digest.
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Scroll down for information about the individual books in the Legacy of Orisha series, and for questions and answers from interviews with the author, Tomi Adeyemi.
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Legacy of Orisha series
Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orisha #1)
With lots of acclaim and positive reviews, Tomi Adeyemi’s West African-inspired fantasy debut conjures a world of magic and danger, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Sabaa Tahir.
They killed my mother. They took our magic. They tried to bury us. Now we rise.
Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls.
But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.
Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.
Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers and her growing feelings for an enemy.
“Adeyemi’s tale of young visionaries navigating a twisted world is psychologically deft and mostly well paced, an excellent bet to live up to the high expectations of it. Let’s hope the novel also leads readers to discover other writers interested in imbuing black stories with West African folklore.”—The Atlantic
Children of Virtue and Vengeance (Legacy of Orisha #2)
After battling the impossible, Zélie and Amari have finally succeeded in bringing magic back to the land of Orïsha. But the ritual was more powerful than they could've imagined, reigniting the powers of not only the maji, but of nobles with magic ancestry, too.
Now, Zélie struggles to unite the maji in an Orïsha where the enemy is just as powerful as they are. But when the monarchy and military unite to keep control of Orïsha, Zélie must fight to secure Amari's right to the throne and protect the new maji from the monarchy's wrath.
With civil war looming on the horizon, Zélie finds herself at a breaking point: she must discover a way to bring the kingdom together or watch as Orïsha tears itself apart. Children of Virtue and Vengeance is the stunning sequel to Tomi Adeyemi's New York Times bestselling debut Children of Blood and Bone, the first title in her Legacy of Orïsha trilogy.
“It’s hard to summarize this middle book of a trilogy without tons of spoilers. The novel is a strong second book in the series when sophomore books are often the weakest. It does more than serve as a bridge between beginning and ending, moving the entire story of the world forward. It also moves ahead the stories of characters we love, giving them power, loss, grief and love along the way.”—Waking Brain Cells
Interviews with Tomi Adeyemi about Legacy of Orisha series
Q: What was it about the young adult fiction genre that called upon you to tell these stories?
“I’ve always felt close to this genre, because it’s really emotional in a way that adult books aren’t. Adult books always feel to me like they’re told from a distance, which means I really never get into them. The characters in YA books let you into their hearts. You care about them, you care about what they’re feeling, what they’re struggling with. I’ve been working on a lot of things this year; I always have a big master plan. When it comes to the book and the series, I wrote books one and two at a very accelerated pace, and that always left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. You want to feel that you got to do everything you possibly could with a piece of art. When I’m done with something, I’m done with it. My stories are like my exes—we dated, it was passionate, it was fun, I’m over it.”—Author Tomi Adeyemi on Writing While The World is On Fire (W magazine)
Q: When authors who are not of color try to include characters of color, or culture of color, they tend to create a monolith. Something a couple of my friends and I noticed watching Luke Cage is that they were very nuanced about representing the American black experience as more than one thing: People from Jamaica, people who just came, people who have been here a long time. It seems like that was something in Children of Blood and Bone. How did you go about parsing what was most important to you?
“People say you’ve got to write honestly and that sounds great but also, what does that mean? I think part of that is knowing there are some things black people go through that are universal and those things are how the world shapes you…if you’re in a racist encounter, they’re not going to say, “Oh, you’re Jamaican, oh, you’re Nigerian; oh, you’re full African American; your ancestors were brought here on slave ships.” That’s not what other people see. In the outside world, we have a kind of universal experience but it also changes depending on whether you’ve grown up in predominantly white spaces or predominantly black spaces…”—15 Minutes with Tomi Adeyemi at San Diego Comic Con (Book Riot)
Q: Zélie and Amari are both teenagers. And they’re very much written as teenagers. They are also both poised to be two of the most powerful people in their communities. How did you balance the fact that these are very young people dealing with huge social problems like starvation, structural racism and war?
“I’ve always written the story I wanted to write. The youth of today isn’t sheltered from anything. They practice school shooting drills. They have the Internet. They see that Australia is on fire. They see that we’re on the brink of war with Iran. They know everything. They see everything. They’re more educated and globalized than probably any society that’s come before them.
“We have this desire, I think, to shelter younger people, even though the world as a whole has not sheltered young people. But I think that’s been broken or is shattering more and more each year, because it’s like, I can’t say you’re so innocent and you don’t know the evils of the world and also have you practice a school shooter drill.”—YA Fantasy Where The Oppression Is Real (Leah Donnella at NPR)
Within the world of Orïsha, Adeyemi locates much to find joy in too. Orïsha itself is named after the deities of the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria. (Wonderfully, her characters blaspheme in the plural, saying “Oh my gods!”):
“I saw the opportunity to show the beauty in the culture and show that these words sound magical. We’re so used to using Latin, but if J.K. Rowling saw magic in that, you can see magic in your own culture. And if you can see it, you can help other people to see it.”—Meet Tomi Adeyemi: the politically-charged author you need to know about in 2019 (Harper’s Bazaar)
Omolara Uthman (OU): I know that you consulted your parents on Yoruba phrases for spells and named mountain ranges after family members. Why was it important to you to imbue Yoruba culture into this story and how does it make you feel to see your culture being celebrated by readers around the world?
“When I first discovered the Orïsha, it was a part of my [Yoruba] culture and a part of my legacy so it was kind of like finding treasure in your own backyard. Once I found it, I decided to lean into it. Something I’ve seen that happens a lot is that people—often fantasy writers specifically—will find a piece of someone’s culture and put it into their writing. But you can’t just take one cool thing and throw it in there. That’s other people’s culture, that’s other people’s heritage, that’s other people’s religions. Once I found it, I was like, ‘OK, I want to do this right because this is a part of my culture.’”—A conversation with Tomi Adeyemi (Omolara Uthman for Assembly)