Daughters Of Nri (The Return Of The Earth Mother): 1

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Lots of different women, which is super nice and all described as beautiful with dark skin and curly hair or braids, and even locs. Our fullness as humans is represented, our weakness and our strengths are recognised and celebrated. I gobbled up the story of Naala and Sanai, desperate to know where the legends and prophecies would take them next, hoping everything would turn out OK. They don't know about their heritage, but they live in vastly different places when the story starts and they have to gradually unlock their powers and find their way back to one another.

The magic of this world is so subtle and breathtakingly beautiful that magic almost feels like the wrong word to use because of the images it conjures up. I’m still extremely interested in reading more from the series though as I love this world, and really do enjoy the characters.There were a lot of times I just felt the writing didn't quite flow, and it was hard for me to become immersed in the story. I've always thought that repeatedly mentioning the skin colour of characters implies how unusual the very idea of their existence in that particular context is.

The writing was immaculate, the world building was really gradual and well paced, the magic system was also really gentle and easy to understand. I definitely think the sequel will work a lot better because now the stage is set, and the last few scenes were really ramping up to some good action. Her pronunciation of the words and the names were so good, and the Nigerian accent she did was also very amazing. And because the story is African (although West African) there are enough similarities that I can relate to.Other thing that bothered me, was the end with the Villain Monologue and the combat scene that wasn't satisfying. We support each other immensely in this world but that doesn’t come easily, it is a journey to get there. Her active imagination was the cause of many terrible nightmares, beautiful daydreams and colourful white lies. The dual narrative/perspectives really worked well here and we got enough time with each character to fall in love with them both as individuals.

One of my favorite things about this book is that the sisters weren't just dumped together and expected to work/figure things out together. We are able to exist in a world of fantasy untouched by slavery and colonialism and dream of the magic that we could have wielded in an alternate reality. Our beauty is recognised as power, and is wielded by characters when they do not even have magic or any other ‘skills’, and that is okay. The god system hasn't been heavily developed in this first book, but it's interesting and unique so far- I always love mythology in fantasy. I devoured the first half of this book literally in one sitting, I didn’t wanna put it down, I was so intrigued and invested in the story from the get go.It took a long time to get to the point of why the twins are special, and by the time their actual twin action happened, it was a rushed conclusion that's only a little satisfying. Woven within the magical pages of this beautiful debut novel, by Reni K Amayo is a story about self-discovery. There really was a lot of telling rather than showing, which is a shame considering this is beautifully written. I didn’t even need to check the glossary sometimes because I could almost guess the what they were talking about through the context.