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Bought for the hype... yeah it's good but not the best. As you can read from the synopsis, story circles around some part of Africa where people can control elements such as fire, wind, mind et cetera. But their tribe was massacred by the King who was brutal himself and thought magis(those who has control over different elements) will bring downfall to the kingdom. The story begins after the massacre where all the magis who ever lived were wiped out and their children whom were dormant with magic power but couldn't bring forth and those without magic were forced to live in a taxed, racially threatened society where they have to live in fear from the king. This is a story about how a young girl named Zelia was trying to bring a revolution with his brother and an exiled princess by reviving magic and to bring down the emperor.

I'll not go around spreading more spoilers, but I can say for sure that story is pretty average. "Average" is not the correct word to say, what I'd like to say that the story was rushed with the writer trying to incorporate many different elements to suit the reader's taste. I've no problem with the story being rushed if its something new, something authentic. But it is not. These days when people are consuming media back and forth, feeling something original is very difficult. We are also not expecting originality, but what we are pleased with is when a story is provided with the good surrounding, careful building up of characters and story and telling it like you can feel it. But this is not happening in this novel. The story was far from being original. Like someone has a very messed up upbringing, he/she will bring justice to the people and overthrow the current system is not something we haven't seen already. This is not the only flaw of this novel. "Feelings" forced into characters is something very hard for me to comprehend. The way story was described you can safely assume it didn't take a month to come to conclusion from the time story actually starts rolling. But in this short span of time our main character Zelia fall in love with the enemy main character, Inan, who was the brother of exiled princes Amari, and also betrayed by him was quite a ride for me. You see it's not that no one ever fell in love and been betrayed within the same month, lol, but the way they fell in love. An enemy who has every motive of killing her, burning her kind, just fell in love by seeing some pictures of her in his memory, because of course how beautiful she looks and that is within one month period. No, they also meet up with each other, wanted to f**k each other and also betrayed by the later(oops spoilers). All within one month, so you can calculate the rest. But when I think deeply it's not only romance which I find full of mediocrity but most of the epic/peak/adrenaline rush scenes didn't able to provide me any thrill at all. It's like I can easily predict what is going to happen. But it's not because I'm able to predict what happens next makes me lost interest or thrill, but because of how that scene was built from zero to peak. An artist's biggest goal is to capture all the senses of their audience because if it's not then they've room for improvement. Because without all senses concentrating at one place, one can't connect to that element. When you can't connect to the story you can't feel the emotion, thrill of it. That's what happened to me with this novel. Due to her superficial explaining, I can't grasp the situation to feel joy or sorrow of it. Some great authors are better at explaining things that makes you easily dive into it, some have their way with words to diminish this anomaly. But Tomi Adeyemi lacks in both. One, her superficial explaining, other, her writing style was nothing out of ordinary.

I'm not going to pry much into characters because characters are merely puppets of the story. But still, I'm quite pleased with their internal build up(one they build personally to overcome a difficult situation). Zelia's path of revenge, Tenzin's brotherhood, Amari's path of revolution and Inan's obsession with Zelia and his conflict of interest was depicted quite well. Compared to Zelia and Inan's rushed, crappy romance, I find Amari and Tenzin's subtle romance is very soothing for the story and it was leading in a good direction. Other characters are just icing on the cake, holding not much impact on the story. But what I didn't like was their external build up like the way they interact with other characters, with the surroundings or surroundings with the characters, their timing of interaction et cetera.

That being said, If she would have explained the story with little in depth, would try to build characters externally more soundly, subtly I wouldn't mind if it was thousand page long. Because the story has potential and with the African setting, it gives us a very fresh vibe. What I would like if the author gives us more insight into African diversity, their culture and how deeply racism has affected them. Ya, I know, she had incorporated it all or tried to. But she has to try harder. This is a book you'll find very thrilling if you read in one fell swoop. So try to read it in one or two sitting. Maybe with her next book she gives us I needed in a book.