When E mentioned that she was reading this book, she called it a “big standard American YA fantasy with racism in North Carolina layered in,” which is a perfect summary. It’s got Cassandra Clare levels of ridiculously attractive teenagers, complex secret magical societies going back centuries, evil monsters to fight, etc, etc. The special sauce in this one is definitely the viewpoint of the Black narrator, who has to navigate racism in the real world alongside the magical one, and whose link to the magical world is intertwined with the race trauma of the country’s history. Narrator Bree, at sixteen, gets admitted into an early college program at UNC Chapel Hill, but finds herself embroiled in an ongoing magical conflict while still having to deal with issues on the home front. Deonn does an amazing job capturing the feeling of being a member of a visible minority going into a snooty, exclusively white environment, where you are almost certainly not welcome, but holding your head up anyway. And I absolutely loved how the plot defiantly made a space for Black people inside the extremely white background of Arthurian legend. Even the developing love triangle doesn’t look like it’ll be too annoying (and the love triangle is a standard building block of the Arthur myth, after all). Very promising start; the sequel is supposed to come out in a couple of months and I will definitely be getting in line.
I admit, I was surprised by the ending and should not have been. I, too, will be reading #2.
I’m glad you liked it too! It was my preferred kind of twist ending: foreshadowed throughout the book, supported by recurring themes and a believable sequence of events, but still surprising when you get to it. I knew something was coming, but not the particulars of it. (It also made the falling-in-love storyline less saccharine, in retrospect; the lineage/reincarnation aspect adds a certain spice to the characters’ interactions.)