Children of Blood and Bone Themes

Prejudice and Inequality

Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone was inspired in part by the ways that prejudice and bigotry drive fear and violence in the real world—for example, she points to contemporary instances of police brutality against black people in America. In the fictional country of Orïsha, society is sharply stratified by a system that pits maji, who do magic, and divîners, who have the potential to do magic, against kosidán, who…

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Duty to Family vs. Self

The tension between responsibility to family and being true to oneself runs through Children of Blood and Bone. Connections between family members are undoubtedly some of the strongest in the novel. At the same time, blind commitment to family can get in the way of a personal sense of right and wrong. Ultimately, learning when to prioritize personal belief over duty to blood family is one of the most important lessons for characters in…

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Faith and Tradition

For the people of the country of Orïsha, faith is very complicated. The divîners’ magical powers are intimately linked with faith in the gods, so religion is one of the central threads connecting divîners to one another and to the past. At the same time, many divîners feel that their faith has been shaken by the horrific events of the Raid and the subsequent hardships under King Saran, when their magic abandoned…

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Cycles of Violence

Children of Blood and Bone tells the story of a kingdom tarnished by a violent past and the ongoing acts of cruelty that oppress divîners (those with the potential to do magic). Yet even some of the characters who have suffered the most under this system, like Zélie, are compelled to use violence as a path to possible peace. Rulers believe they must use violence to keep violence at bay, while revolutionaries hope to…

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