Malik Baron has had the usual fantasy hero’s rough start in life. He’s an orphan who’s finally aged out of the abusive foster homes he grew up in, and he has the prickly, exasperatingly self-destructive, suspicious personality to show for it. He also has erratic magic powers and no idea where they came from, except for that they have something to do with the night his mother died or disappeared.
When Malik discovers that his younger foster brother Taye is being abused by his new foster dad, he concocts a plan to use his magic to steal a car, rescue Taye, and drive from Alabama to California with no money and only an unreliable mystical tingle to go on. Brilliant, right?
Fortunately for him, some magical heavy hitters take note, and Malik is suddenly reunited with his powerful witch of a grandmother and admitted to Caiman University, the world’s premiere HBCU.
There aren’t a lot of surprises here. It’s a magic school story, and we’re all pretty familiar with those now. The comparison to the Harry Potter novels is well-earned, but this also felt like an edgier version of my favorite Black magic school novel, The Gatekeeper’s Staff by Antoine Bandele. It’s the usual mix of new friends, strange magic classes, wise mentors, first loves, epic world-changing MacGuffins, and unexpected betrayals, all setting up a new quest for the presumed sequels. Not a single plot point here surprised me. What did surprise me was how thoroughly Black and Southern this is. Every character, cultural reference, and spellcasting phrase has its origins from somewhere in the African diaspora, often drawing from bits of reality. Hoodoo and voodoo rub elbows with the old school Black church, Haitian Creole is a common second language, and if you go through and put every song mentioned in the book together, you get an excellent Southern rap playlist. Every drop of this book is blackity-Black and while Black boys are becoming more common in fantasy, this was still a revelation because it’s so natural. Williams is writing from firmly within his #ownnormal and the result is a rich fantasy world that sits in a place still unusual for the genre without feeling contrived or overexplaining to try and appeal to people outside of the culture.
This was originally a screenplay, and that shows in how big and thrilling and brutal the action scenes are. I want this to be a movie just so I can see the dodgeball game and a certain intergenerational smackdown live in 3D. Malik is initially set up to seem unlikeable due to his reactivity and teenaged attitude, and he stays that way for a while. But he does what all heroes do–he fights through it all, focuses on doing the right thing and staying true to himself, and in the end, you’ll cheer for him a litle bit.
One more thing for those of you with kids who might want to read this: it’s a bit more new adult than its YA label would suggest. It manages to be very grown and very teenaged at the same time–Malik is a college freshman and gets up to college-aged pastimes in between hex lessons. There’s swearing, drugs, sex and violence, but it’s all age-appropriate, in that these are the things 17-19 year olds actually do when they’re freshmen. The parts of this set in the dorms aren’t inaccurate, basically. But they’re also not squeaky-clean, so if you’re reading this with a sheltered kid younger than sixteen, either rethink it or be available for questions and discussions when certain scenes crop up.
A packed house party and an easy course load to Blood At The Root.
(Beautiful people, isn’t it nice when a highly anticipated book is exactly what it promises to be? Because this one was! To read other books featuring magical Black boys who get the girl(or boy) and save the day, please check out this booklist I made a while ago. For other diverse books for diverse readers, please check out the Equal Opportunity Bookshop. Just remember we have a whole thing with them so if you buy something from them at a link from this site, they pay us. It’s not very much, but it’s enough to keep my library full and this website going, so thanks in advance for paying it a visit. Now, go and read something good! Peace!)
Equal Opportunity Reader 