Reviews

Abeni's Song by P. Djèlí Clark

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timinbc's review against another edition

4.0

I hope people don't skip this book because it's in the chidren's section. It's fine for adults too (I'm 74).

You can read in the context of slavery, blood diamonds, and mining if you want, but the story works just fine if you don't. You can read the monster transformation as metaphorical or as real, it works either way.

Abeni is believable. She's impulsive, sometimes rude, sometimes overconfident, sometimes reluctant - just like real-life kids. And her friends/enemies have realistic pluses and minuses too.

Asha is terrific, with her pots, her straw man, her Bugs Bunny magic bag, ... scores 100 on the Sensawunda scale.

And the plot is plausible.

There are quite a few reviews here saying it's too dark, there's nudity, there's shape-changing, ... Sometimes I wonder if these reviewers have never read anything set in other cultures where (for example)shape-changing is almost required - nine-tailed foxes, dragons, changing form to fly somewhere, all no big deal. Same people have no prob with the Dementors in Harry Potter, or a zillion Disney movies.

I will continue to grab PDClark works on sight.

devrose's review against another edition

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anna_hepworth's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

This book is outside my comfort zone of reading. I've read it because it was nominated for the Lodestar Award, and I can see why. Beautifully written, wonderful characters, great world-building, very clever story. But grim with some brightness.

I struggled with reading it in two ways. The first is that it took me some time to be comfortable with the viewpoint character, Abeni, who is young and a bit thoughtless about the people around them. Entirely believable, but off-putting. And the other is that there are some truly dreadful things happening, and I needed to read in little chunks to not be overwhelmed with grief. Some small sections are resolved / improved at the end, with some of the major ones left hanging. Whether this is because it was the 'right' place for the story to end, or because it has been set up for a sequel, I am unsure.

As a coming of age story, it works really well.

Content Warnings