My 2018 Reads, Part 2: The Kindred Minds of Blood and Bone

After finishing Pangaea: Unsettled Land and Superhuman, I let a few good Google searches lead me to my next book. I knew I needed another black cast with some magic. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi DELIVERT. I was supposed to find a book to read alongside it, one I could switch back and forth with while on the metro to work.

Nope.

I started reading… and reading… and reading… and I was done. I found myself itching to devour the pages, find out more about this world and these characters. I sat at home and read for hours on end. No TV, just a light dinner to get me through another fifty or so pages. I read through this book in about five days. Fun fact: I was reading the last chapter, and didn’t know it was the last chapter. I went and turned the page and… that was it. I was UPSET (but in such a good way).

I started and finished Children of Blood and Bone near the last week of March. I expected it to carry me through much of April, but we see how that turned out. So before April started I needed to find replacements, something to fill the void. I ran across Octavia Butler many (many, many) times during my searches and decided that a time-travel story would be nice. (I absolutely love time-travel, by the way. That and six-degrees of separation. To me, there are very, very much linked.) I wasn’t too keen on reading anything about slavery, but Kindred otherwise sounded nice, so I picked it up. To join it, I chose The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken. Now, when choosing this book, I was still going by the “must star a black (or POC) character” rule I had set for myself. I assumed the main character was white (I feel like I remember “some people” complaining about the casting choice for the movie). But, because of the movie, I said, “I can have Ruby be Black in my head as well.” Well, come to find out, there was already another main black character in the book!

Kindred got right into the action. I think Butler gave us all two or three paragraphs before the first time slip happened. I loved it. And, surprisingly, I loved the entire story. I felt for Dana and the struggles she went through. Could she risk changing history at the cost of her own life? I think the only thing I didn’t care for in this book (besides that ANNOYING, entitled ass— Ugh. Spoilers.) was the chapter-less format. It was more-so divided up into segments. I normally have to stop reading throughout a chapter anyway, but I had no “end goals” to get to, something to say, “Oh, I can read another few pages before I put this down.”

The Darkest Minds was very, very interesting. From the trailers for the movie, I was expecting the story to go in one direction. But… it doesn’t! I can say those movie trailers didn’t give away much of the story at all. EXCEPT, because I was, in fact, reading the book, I went to the movies one day and saw another trailer for it. I just so happened to put a few clues together about the end of the book because I noticed a scene I hadn’t encountered yet. It didn’t deter me, though. I’m not sure why I haven’t yet, but I still need to see the movie to see how it compares. Soon!

Next week, I get to the first book I absolute hated this year. I didn’t DNF it, but, oh man, I was tempted to. On the flip side, I also came across – perhaps? – my favorite book/series this year. Hope to see you all back next week!