The Book Thread

[Velaryon]

I've been enjoying the audiobook of Redemptor by Jordan Ifueko, the sequel to Raybearer. I think I can honestly say these are the best YA fantasy I have read since Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy. I dig the African-inspired world, and unlike Children of Blood and Bone (which similarly draws influence from west African mythology), it doesn't feel like the same old story I've read 100 times before, just with a new coat of paint. Also, the dialogue is about 50 times better.

While it's not completely devoid of standard YA fantasy tropes, Raybearer forgoes the dreaded love triangle (in fact shutting it down so conclusively that even shippers can't resurrect it), and what tropes it does use it handles skillfully rather than making a cookie-cutter teen fantasy. There's also a lot of good political-social themes that I like, but I didn't see them as direct analogues for any real-world issues, and more importantly I never felt beaten over the head with them. I think it's entirely possible to miss or ignore that layer entirely and still enjoy this quite a bit.

Tarisai is a great protagonist, and while I'm still fairly early in book 2, so far it seems to be a worthy sequel to my favorite book of 2020 (even over the two Dresden books we got that year).