Series Order: TJ Young & The Orishas, No. 2
Written by Antoine Bandele
Publisher: Bandele Books, June 2022
505 Pages
Completed September 10, 2024

TJ Young spent last summer fighting to unlock the secrets behind his sister’s mysterious death but found himself battling the magic of the ancient Orishas instead. And some of the answers he sought came with a promise he may not be able to keep: to dismantle new human construction on the coastline of Lagos, Nigeria by the start of spring.

But how does a teenager do away with decades of infrastructure in only half a year?

He’ll need to enlist the help of new allies, mortal and immortal alike. And thankfully, after surviving the grueling magical curriculum of Camp Olosa, he’s now headed to the most prestigious magic school in West Africa: Ifa Academy for Tomorrow’s Diviners.

But will that be enough as he prepares for what can only end in an all-out war between mortals and gods?

This review contains major spoilers for the book and for the previous one in the series, but I don’t feel there’s any other way to explain why I ended up not enjoying the book…

I really wanted to enjoy this book, especially when TJ meets a deaf boy, named Emeka, who uses Yoruba Sign Language (a sign language used in Nigeria), on the way to Ifa Academy. I was excited about the Deaf representation and since TJ knew a little bit of American Sign Language (enough to realize Emeka was deaf and using YSL), I was excited that there might be interesting interactions with them. Unfortunately, their potential friendship was derailed by misunderstandings and lies, resulting in Emeka hating TJ and avoiding him. We find out later on what the lies were and that Emeka has been providing information to the enemy group. Near the end of the book Emeka is killed in a brutal fashion seemingly just for the shock value because he had outlived his usefulness to the enemy. Thought, it’s not even clear who killed Emeka or why. It doesn’t appear to be the people Emeka was providing information to given how one of them reacts but again it’s not clear. Ultimately I felt like this had been a cheap use of the character and since he was the only deaf / disabled character in the book it stood out.

I also feel as though the author has a habit of going out of his way to describe “odd” looking people. TJ meets another teen, named Umar, who apparently has disproportionately sized arms and legs along with some other physical characteristics that are described in detail for no real reason. There’s also a running joke that he’s been trying out for the school sport team but doesn’t make the team each time he tries. Umar does end up having more to do in the end of the book but it doesn’t really make up for him being the butt of jokes about his lack of physical ability.

The first book had similar issues. TJ meets an overweight character named Joshua who is described as smelly and gross and all he thinks about is eating. Granted TJ and Joshua end up being friends and work well together throughout the book. But in the end it’s revealed that Joshua never existed and is the secretly one of the Orishas hiding inside a body that was created for him. There was another character in the first book with bursting pimples that gets called “juice” … Again the author goes out of his way to describe differences in detail in a way that sticks out. Especially when other characters aren’t described to the same degree. One can argue that it’s teenager point of view but at the same time the author is making a choice to make TJ that kind of a teenager. It also doesn’t entirely fit in with how kind TJ seems to be otherwise.

There’s also a love triangle in the second book, but that ended up being the least annoying part of the book, as it at least made sense in some ways. I did like the family dynamics and friendships in the book along with the world building, all of which I liked from the first book and why I of why I wanted to read this book. I really wish it had turned out better but as it stands I don’t have any interest in reading the next book in the series.

As a side note Emeka is described as “hearing impaired” rather than deaf which stuck out as deaf is usually the preferred term and makes sense for a character who can’t hear at all and uses sign language. But I don’t know for sure if that is more a cultural/regional difference as the setting is in Nigeria and “hearing impaired might actually be preferred there verses what is preferred here. Plus it’s implied that Emeka lost his hearing sometime during his earlier childhood and could also speak with effort and read lips as a result. All of that could lead to more of a preference towards using hearing impaired vs hard of hearing.

See the StoryGraph page for “The Windweaver’s Storm” for warnings and more reviews.