The first of an anticipated Afrofantasy duology has caught the attention of Teen Vogue, Book Riot, Nerd Daily, Tor.com, and other sites as a book to watch. Blood Scion joins the growing Afrofantasy genre alongside such popular novels as Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone and Namina Forna’s The Gilded Ones, which center African culture, history, and mythology in their books’ magical realms. Yoruba-Nigerian mythology, espionage behind enemy lines, and explorations of anger come together in author Deborah Falaye’s dark fantasy debut novel, which came out last month from HarperTeen. In the story, Sloan, descendent of the Orisha gods with the power to wield fire at her will, must keep her magical capabilities secret under the colonial regime of Lucis. When she is unwillingly recruited into the Lucis army, Sloan takes advantage of her position in the heart of enemy operations to overthrow their rule from within.
Falaye told PW, “At the time I started writing there wasn’t really any sort of diversity in YA [looking at] mythology outside of the Western culture, beyond Greek mythology or Norse mythology. So I was like, ‘Well, how cool would it be to write about the Orisha gods at a time when people didn't really know about them?’ ”
Blood Scion’s March release marked the 10-year anniversary of Falaye starting her first draft of the story back in 2012. A self-starter, Falaye took it upon herself to sign up for online for writing classes, learned to edit and found early readers on her own, and eventually discovered Pitch Wars, the former online mentoring program that provided her with guidance to steer her concept forward. Following her time as a Pitch Wars mentee, Falaye later found her first agent, Victoria Marini at Irene Goodman Literary Agency, and began pitching her book; in 2019 editor Kristin Pettit at HarperCollins acquired world rights. Falaye is currently represented by Jenny Bent at the Bent Agency.
“I really lucked out with my editor because from the jump, Kristin just got it.” Falaye said. “She was really the one who was like, ‘Give me more spirituality, give me more culture, give me more ferocity.’ It’s definitely been great working with her.”
Promotional plans ahead of Blood Scion’s release included pre-order campaigns with exclusive merchandise such as “Humanity Always” jewelry and illustrated cards featuring the book’s central characters. An exclusive edition of Blood Scion was released by OwlCare, with sprayed edges along with signed bookplates and matching wooden bookmarks. Falaye also got more hands-on with giveaways, offering signed and personalized copies of the book, which also came with annotations of songs from a playlist boasting more than 400 songs, which she listened to while writing to evoke emotions similar to her heroine Sloan’s.
Sloan’s anger stems from colonial powers overtaking her country, stealing its resources while leaving its natives on the brink of poverty, and forcing her to be a child soldier in a war waged against her own kind. Falaye was inspired to think about anger and violence against Black girls by the Bring Back Our Girls campaign of 2014, and was committed to an informed portrayal, pulling research from books such as A Long Way Home by Ishmael Beah and They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children by Roméo Dallaire.
“As Black women, we’re not allowed to be angry; we’re not allowed to show our rage and our anger at certain things,” she said. “So we almost have to temper our emotions, right? And with this book, I was like, ‘No, you’re gonna get an angry Black girl. And you’re gonna get to understand where that anger comes from, and know that this is a valid anger and it’s justified.’ ”
It seems Falaye’s efforts have paid off, as early readers’ excitement for the novel came with personal, touching stories. “I read a beautiful email recently that just made me cry,” Falaye said. “It was this girl who had said reading Sloan’s story and [seeing] her anger as a Black girl, she related so much to that.”
BuzzFeed, Bustle, Paste magazine, and Nerdist all touted Blood Scion in their roundups of highly anticipated books of 2022, and it was recently selected as the Teen Staff Pick of the Month at Chapters Indigo, the Canadian bookstore chain.
Looking ahead toward future installments, Falaye is excited to keep readers on their toes. “I’ve been getting a lot of people who are just like, ‘The twist! The twist! The twist!’ ” she said referencing the novel’s shocking final twist. “So definitely more twists are coming. I didn’t even know the story was going to go in this direction, but it’s going in a direction that I’m so happy for people to discover.”
Blood Scion by Deborah Falaye. HarperTeen, $18.99 Mar. 8 ISBN 978-0-7595-5447-4
