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.