wordsofclover's reviews
2085 reviews

Oh goodness, where to start with this one. The best thing about this book is the stunning cover and I must say the cover designer for all three Orisha books did a great job as they’re all so beautiful. Unfortunately that’s where the good ends and everything from the first page onwards was downhill for me.

We meet with Zelie once again following the events from book 2 which saw Zelie and her companions knocked out and waking up on some kind of prison ship. From the start of book 3, we find out that this actually has nothing to do with Nehanda and the titans but is in face a brand new enemy they call the ‘Skulls’ led by someone called King Baldyr who wants to harness Zelie’s magic and has no issue with sacrificing Orishans as he goes.

Zelie soon has visions of another girl who Baldyr needs to complete his journey to a living god - and she must get to her first so that’s what she does alongside Tzain and Amari. You might be wondering but what about Inan and the Orisha they left behind? Well it appears we are more or less done with that story and that fight as now all they have to do is say ‘hey look at these new enemies. Let’s all make up so we can fight these guys instead’ and this somehow solves decades of fighting and maltreatment of the magi. Super lazy writing.

The new enemies really threw me off - and the story went in a completely different direction to what I thought it would. I think if we knew more about the Skulls in book 2 or even had the first half of book 3 in book 2, the books would have felt more linear. But I felt completely discombobulated that everything we had worked toward in the first books were just forgotten about in an instant.

We do travel away from Orisha and discover the lands of Gaia where Mae’e lives. Here Amari finally gets the lesbian love story that was very obvious from how she talked about Binta (they were never just friends, come on) but the problem is it’s so rushed and insta love - but then again I have found all the love relationships in this trilogy to be super quick and intense with not much believable time. The only good thing about this book was the lack of Zelie and Inan’s boring love-hate-love relationship. I did much prefer Zelie’s relationship with Roen but unfortunately there’s no update on this as Roen has simply completely disappeared - he was mentioned once in an ‘I hope he’s alright’ though by Zelie but other than that, nothing. Which is WILD and I don’t understand it at all - he was a major love interest in book 2 and had quite a bit to do with the rebellion yet he’s hardly even mentioned in book 3. WHAT!

The timeline as well for this book zipped through so fast, it didn’t make sense either. How quickly could everyone sail? It felt like they were in a game of Pokemon and could traverse seas within minutes. Once they reached Gaia, Tzain goes off to become some kind of ultra warrior within a week or so - and listen I love me a training montage but Tzain has been such a vanilla side character, it felt odd to have his POV thrown into the mix all of a sudden and I didn’t really care about his hulk axe.

The final battle was fine, the sacrifices were expected and the epilogue was awful - again nothing really actually sorted just some kind of magical ‘we’re all best friends now’. You’re telling me the Nehanda we know from book 2 would suddenly be besties with the magi even after her beloved son has died to save one of them. No way.

I’m not sure what happened with this. The hype for book 1 was so real and it had such a sense of beautiful magic and a story focused on black history and characters in a way I feel we hadn’t seen before. Maybe the pressure got to the author but there was such a large time gap between book 2 and 3 - and then for book 3 to be so poor, it’s so sad. This whole book felt rushed and ill thought out and I just really feel like the author wanted to or maybe was contractually obliged to finish it up by a certain date.

I received this book from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

 

This book is going to stay with me for a long time. 

 

We follow Eve in the days and months following her husband’s unexpected death. As Eve loses herself in grief, her familyy try to help her as best they can and she also has to deal with her horrible mother in law who seems determined to make her feel guilty for the loss of her son. 

 

Not only is this just a beautifully written book that left me in an emotional heap, I just don’t think I’ve read a book that captured the confusing, overwhelming feeling of grief and the not so linear process of getting over the loss of someone. Not only that but we also have a secondary element to Q’s death in this book as he died by suicide. We follow Eve’s confusion and guilt over the clear mental health crisis Q was suffering from that he had apparently completely hidden from her as well as the anger that eventually surfaces over such a death, and the repetition of the guilt for feeling the anger - and then also the anger at others for being angry at Q. It was a whole cycle that was very real and very full of feeling. 

 

The importance of family and friends is beautiful in this - Eve comes from a Nigerian-English family and we see time and time again how the presence of her parents and her brother, and the staunch protector in her older sister brings Eve peace even if she doesn’t quite realize it. Eve feels frustrated that her family think she needs to ‘get over’ Q’s death quicker than she ever could but what they really want is a flicker of their old Eve back and how afraid they are of losing her as well. Not to mention they are also dealing with grief too as they loved Q as well. 

 

Eve’s mother in law is potentially one of the worst characters I’ve ever read - she doesn’t really have any redemption but I don’t think she deserved one anyway. Every time her name came up, I boiled with rage on Eve’s behalf. And also felt anger at Q for allowing his mother to be this way to Eve for their entire relationship. 

 

I like that this book didn’t tie up Q’s death in a neat bow. It was tragic, awful and may have been preventable if he had been able to communicate better about how he felt. There was no note because sometimes there isn’t. The story was still full of questions by the end that could never be answered because Q wasn’t here anymore. 

 

This book is a raw gut punch of emotion and absolutely amazing. 

Set in dual timelines, The Amendments follows the experiences of Dolores and Nell - mother and daughter - as they grapple with what being an Irish woman means to them, bodily autonomy, faith and motherhood. 

 

I thought this was a really thought-provoking and at times moving and powerful read and it’s one of the few novels I’ve seen tackle the topic of the Eight Amendment with such nuance, taking in so many different opinions while not declaring any as wrong and really understanding that it’s a topic that causes pain, confusion and really isn’t a black or white decision for a lot of people - especially in a country steeped in religion for so long. 

 

We first meet Nell as we learn that her partner Adrienne is expecting a baby and it becomes clear that Nell is at therapy trying to face up to some issues and trauma she has held onto since she was a teenager. We also learn that as a teenager, Nell was involved in a religious group in her small town and was quite involved in a ‘sisterhood’ of faith. 

 

We also follow Nell’s mother Dolores as a young woman in the 80s as she leaves the town to study in Dublin, and ends up falling in with some ‘women libbers’ who introduce Dolores to the idea of repealing the Eight Amendment and the many arguments there are around pro choice vs pro life. 

 

Dolores and Nell are both complicated characters with so much hidden and forced down feelings between them that I just loved reading about them and their dynamic so much - as well as how they related to everyone around them. At first I wasn’t sure about the Hermanas as it does come across quite cult-y but I also understood how for a teenage Nell somewhere that fostered sisterhood like that could be something great. 

 

Martina herself was also a sad character in the background of Nell’s story - almost a tragic figure and maybe I would have liked a bit more time with her. 

 

CW abortion, miscarriage, suicide, stillbirth