children of blood and bone essay

In English, we read the story 'Children of blood and bone' written by Tomi Adeyemi. Once it was read, we were tasked to write an essay describing the book. We got to choose to write about the characters, the ideas and themes, or writing techniques used in the story. I selected to write about 3 writing techniques used, as I knew it would be the most challenging of the 3, and I was ready to take the risk:

Children of blood and bone by Tomi Adeyemi is the first book in a three part series that tells the tale of Zelie Adeboia. Within her written words, Adeyemi was used many methods and techniques to engage her readers into every battle, every betrayal, and every blood curdling romance that challenges the protagonists race against time to restore magic to the Maji of Orisha.

Her possibly most powerful method of writing is her point of view words of each chapter. Each word is spoken by a character in the story, as though they themselves are telling us their story. Within each chapter we see an insight of the thoughts and feelings of either Zelie, Amari, Inan, or Tzain. This technique is both useful and powerful as it gives us a clear look into the character’s thoughts, opinion, and reasoning behind their actions. Point of view writing is a method of writing as it helps the reader understand the characters within the story better than when they write in third person. In my opinion, point of view writing is a technique that everybody should learn, as it can help them truly understand how to write deep, meaningful stories.

Another technique Adeyemi uses is the detail she puts into each chapter. Detail in a story is the difference between a good, powerful story or a dull, not interesting one. Adeyemi uses just the right amount of detail to describe each character, location, problem, and action. This technique helps gain the reader's attention, and urges them to continue reading to see what happens next. Detail in a story helps a person understand the designs of the characters, places, and describes the intensity of each battle and betrayal. Within our story, Zelie describes to us just how heart shattering watching her mother hang from a tree has, keeping in mind at the time that event occurred she has just a child. She also describes mainly at the start how much of a screw up she sees herself as, even going as far to state that she has not worthy of bringing magic back to Orisha, despite being chosen by the gods. I think that the detail Adeyemi put into children of blood and bone has one of the things that grasped me into the story and allowed me to want to keep reading onward.

The third and final technique used that helped tie Adeyemi’s story together was her use of metaphors. The use of metaphors helped Adeyemi to state just how deep certain parts of the story where. Adeyemi uses quite a few metaphors within her story, and it helps the reader to understand certain aspects of her story. Metaphors are a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to something that is not actually there, or not actually applicable. Metaphors are very useful in story writing, as it can describe a certain aspect better than using a normal writing style can. An example of a metaphor is “The dark curtain of night feel upon us.” Adeyemi mainly uses metaphors in her chapters in which it is in Zelie’s point of view, as Zelie is the character who's opinion, thoughts and feelings we need to understand the most, as she is the protagonist of the story. The metaphors are mainly used to describe traumatic events in Zelie’s past, or describe the feeling of her being in the dreamspace with Inan, who was supposed to be her enemy, but became her lover. The use of metaphors is also a powerful technique to uphold and use, as it can be a very effective method when describing certain events or characters.

Children of blood and bone uses many techniques to intrigue the reader into reading it. Metaphors, Detail, and Point of view writing are just 3 of the techniques Adeyemi uses to make her story the best she possibly can, and it shows that she tried her best. In my opinion, Children of blood and bone is an amazing story that fans of fantasy, forbidden love and magic will enjoy. It is clearly shown just how much detail and thought she put into children of blood and bone, and I am excited to read the other 2 books in the series.