Tag: black boys

#REVIEW: Bones at the Crossroads, by LaDarrion Williams

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

Before you read this review, which is of the second book in the Blood at the Root series, I’d like you to read my review of the first book, Blood at the Root. Why? Because it’s kind of fascinating just how cleanly my reading experience of Bones paralleled my reading of Blood:

  • I definitely and absolutely have had Malik in my classroom before. Even more so in this book than in the previous one, honestly; Williams calls Malik “messy” in his Author’s Foreword to this book, and I feel like Malik’s messiness, and to be more specific, his temper, maybe hurts him more in this book than it does in Blood. This is a kid who has been handed a raw deal by life on a ton of different levels (the magic kinda makes it better, I imagine) but one way or another he doesn’t handle it like a grown-up. Why? He’s not one.
  • Watching Malik navigate romantic relationships? Also super familiar.
  • I would say the moment where Williams absolutely stomps on the accelerator is closer to the 2/3 mark of the book than the halfway point, but while Blood came close to making me cry a couple of times– something that, let me repeat, almost never happens while I’m reading– page 368 absolutely 100% got me. Like, a literal gasp, and a well of pride, and I’m not going to pretend I was sobbing or anything but there were actual real tears.
  • I am not enough of a nerd that I’m going to figure out exactly what percentage of the book was finished at page 368, and you can’t make me.
  • NO.
  • It’s 67.6%, so my estimate was right on the money, fuck you.
  • Anyway, I referenced “twists and turns and betrayals” in the first review, and … YEAH. Along with some major reveals and some major shake-ups of what you thought you knew from the first book.

And then the Goddamned thing ends on a cliffhanger, and … remember when I was reading Godsgrave, a million years ago, and I said that I’d never been happier to have the sequel of a book on hand before finishing it? The sequel to Bones at the Crossroads hasn’t even got a release date yet, so LaDarrion Williams is about to acquire a new, and very impatient, roommate.

I will ding the book a tiny bit for dragging occasionally before that pedal-to-the-metal moment that carries through the rest of the story, and it doesn’t mean a whole lot to say this is the best book I’ve read so far this year on January 7th, but this was real real good and if you haven’t read Blood at the Root, go pick that up, and read slowly, and maybe by the time you finish Bones the end of the trilogy will be available.

#REVIEW: Blood at the Root, by LaDarrion Williams

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews1 Comment

This is another one of those “See that cover? Go buy this book” types of reviews. Because … damn.

They say that authors nowadays need a social media presence in order to sell any books, and, well, I’m only aware of Blood at the Root because the TikTok algorithm put LaDarrion Williams in front of my face over and over again until I caved and ordered his book. And Williams is refreshingly direct about why he wrote this book: there aren’t enough Black boys in fantasy books, and so he wrote a fantasy book with a Black boy as the main character. Or, a Black young man at least, as Malik is 17 at the beginning of the book. Which, come to think of it, I don’t remember him having a birthday during the book, so he’s an awfully young college freshman, but I think he mentioned finishing school early at some point, so it’s probably fine.

I am certain that I’m not the first person to describe Blood at the Root as “Harry Potter at an HBCU.” In fact, I’m pretty sure the author himself has used that formulation. And, honestly, for the first half of the book or so, it’s a little bit too much Harry Potter at an HBCU, to be honest with you. You will literally be going through this book saying “Okay, here’s Hermione, and this guy is probably Draco, and that guy is definitely Snape, and oh! look! Death Eaters!” and so on and so forth. The first half is very, very tropey, in a way that I was willing to let slide because 1) the book is YA and 2) the actual intended market of the book is Black boys who don’t read much, so, y’know, the repeated tropes from other books that they haven’t read isn’t going to bother them, right? But it’s definitely there and it would be kind of ridiculous to not take note of it.(*)

That said, Harry Potter at an HBCU in Louisiana with a Black male lead is going to be pretty distinct from the Daniel Radcliffe books no matter how much it borrows, and the freshness of Williams’ Afro-Haitian mix of magics and characters is enough to carry you through the first half. Malik himself is a great character; I recognize this kid, and I’ve had to teach him math in the past, and his relationships with the other characters in the book, particularly his younger foster brother Taye and his childhood friend Alexis are tremendously well-drawn.

And then that second half hits, and you discover that all that emotional investment in the characters is about to be used against you, and the number of twists and turns and betrayals is head-spinning. Like, I don’t cry when reading books, and to a large extent I don’t understand people who claim that books make them cry all the time, but if I was a crier this one would have gotten me at at least two or three entirely distinct points.

The book definitely has some weak points, and there are bits and bobs here and there where you can tell it’s a debut novel, but it ends so well that I can’t help but strongly recommend it. I’m not sure when the sequel comes out, but I’m sure TikTok will let me know, and I’ll have it on day one. Check it out.

(*) Not that I think anyone’s going to call me out on it, but I want to point out that all of the punctuation in that sentence is exactly where I want it to be. “Black boys who don’t read much” and not “Black boys, who don’t read much”. Thank you.

On DEAR JUSTYCE, by Nic Stone

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

This is another of those posts that is sort of a review of the book, but as I’m currently planning on talking more about what the book isn’t than what it is, I’m not going to tag it that way, at least not in the headline. Here’s the review part: this is a good book, and an important book, and you should read it, and I think it’s probably better than Dear Martin, the book it’s a sequel to, but I’ve said before that Dear Martin suffered for me by being read nearly immediately after The Hate U Give and covering a lot of the same territory. Dear Justyce isn’t suffering from that, so it may just be that I was more able to review the book on its own merits.

Anyway, the story: Dear Justyce is, like Dear Martin, mostly an epistolary novel, or a story told through letters. In Dear Martin, the main character was basically writing journal entries that were framed as letters to Martin Luther King Jr. In Justyce, the main character, a Black teenager named Quan, is actually writing to Justyce, the main character of the first book. I’m pretty sure Quan made some appearances in the first book, but honestly it’s been a few years and I’m not a hundred percent certain, and Justyce is the POV character for occasional bits of this book as well.

And it’s the structure of the book that kind of has me frustrated with it. Justyce is in his first year at Yale as this book begins, and he’s pre-law. He was always presented as an academically oriented, really bright kid, so the notion that the story is being told through his letters is entirely believable. Quan is presented as a kid who could have been Justyce, had he been dealt a fairer hand by society. He could have been the Yale kid, and instead he’s been arrested multiple times (he is incarcerated through the entire novel, although portions are either flashback or him describing times when he was free) and he’s currently imprisoned because he’s accused of killing a cop. And I’m not going to get too far into spoiler territory, but we’re given plenty of other reasons to feel sympathetic toward the kid.

Here’s my thing: I’ve got perhaps half a dozen former students who I know are locked up, at least two for murder and one for aggravated assault and a few other things. And the two kids who are locked up for murder? At least one of them definitely did it. And my kids don’t have good friends who are conveniently in law school and have access to good lawyers, and– and this bit is important– none of them are remotely capable of writing the eight- and ten-page letters that Quan dashes off routinely throughout this book. A lot of the kids who get caught up in the school-to-prison pipeline aren’t as academically talented (I am deliberately not saying “smart”) or as literate as Quan is portrayed in this book, and that’s sort of a problem when you’re trying to write an epistolary novel with a parallel structure to your first book.

This doesn’t make Dear Justyce a bad book, mind you. There are ways in which Nic Stone sets up Quan to be a sympathetic character, and you want your main character to be sympathetic. What I’m wondering is what Dear Rayterrion might have looked like– a book about a kid who might have been every bit as screwed by the system– he says he’s innocent, after all– and no doubt had a very similar upbringing as Quan did, but adds a ton of academic challenges as well and lacks his easy facility with the written word. Can you even write a book like this when the main character can barely read or write? Because I remember this kid from 8th grade, and I’m pretty sure nothing got better between 15 and 17. What’s that book look like?

(I also want a book about Martel Montgomery, who is simultaneously a mentor, a local gang leader, a college-educated social worker, and the reason Quan is in jail. He’s a fascinating character. But that’s a side conversation.)

Anyway, none of this is really Dear Justyce’s fault, it’s just where the book got my head going. I’d recommend you read both of them, if you haven’t, and I may well revisit Dear Martin— it’s short, after all– to see what I think of it after this book and with some distance from The Hate U Give.