Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm befuddled by all the positive reviews. Did these people actually read the book? Adeyemi has created a world with great potential, but she fumbles so badly I found myself dragging through most of the book. If I hadn't had to read it for work, I would have given up. The "strong female characters" are not strong AT ALL; they're just violent. I'm all for violence when it serves a greater purpose, but here it is gratuitous and even at times confusing. Adeyemi is killing off little kids and describing graphic torture of a mother and of the main character, among others. The naval battle/gladiator part is equally odd--it doesn't even really make sense, and since it is already abundantly clear how horrifically the magi suffer at the hands of their oppressors, it doesn't move the story along at all. In the end, a father kills his son due to pure bigotry, then the daughter/brother kills her father because she recognizes that her father is purely evil. (So purely, in fact, that her brother comes off as an idiot for ever being loyal to him, much less staying loyal when he's trying to kill his love interest.) The whole thing is so forced it's almost funny! Meanwhile, though several women do wield some form of power in this book, many others are quite pathetic, e.g. Zelie's mother, who we only see tortured and victimized until the last chapter, the Queen, and even Kaea, who though high up in the military is merciless and full of hatred (like many in this book). As for male characters, they are pretty lame--there's the vicious, hateful king Saran, his son, Inan, who is a blind follower until he falls for a magi, at which point he promises to betray his horrid father, after which he backtracks and ends up destroying the girl he's been ogling and smooching. Tzain, the heroine's brother, is better, but he seems angry and powerless through much of the book, and as a character he never really comes alive. Lastly, what is with the pseudo African tribal elements? An attempt to copy The Black Panther, maybe? There were tons of chants in some sort of dialect, but since we never get more information, it wasn't at all clear where that language came from. (I think it might actually have been a real language, perhaps? But it came off like a cheesy fake magic "tongue.") Bottom line: Children of Blood and Bone seemed to involve Adeyemi listing the things she thinks young adult readers would like (violence, fantasy, revenge plots, sex), then dropping them haphazardly into a narrative that might have been compelling in the hands of a more skilled creator but, alas, Just. So. Wasn't.