Review: Children of Anguish and Anarchy (Legacy of Orisha #3)

Children of Anguish and Anarchy, Book 3 of the Legacy of Orisha Series by Tomi Adeyemi

Published By: Macmillan Publishing
Publication Date: June 25, 2024
Date Read: April 5, 2025
Genre: YA – Fantasy
Source: Bought
Format: Hardback
Pages: 356

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New allies rise.
The Blood Moon nears.
Zélie faces her final enemy.
The king who hunts her heart.

When Zelie seized the royal palace that fateful night, she thought her battles had come to an end. The monarchy had finally fallen. The maji had risen again. Zélie never expected to find herself locked in a cage and trapped on a foreign ship. Now warriors with iron skulls traffic her and her people across the seas, far from their homeland.

Then everything changes when Zélie meets King Baldyr, her true captor, the ruler of the Skulls, and the man who has ravaged entire civilizations to find her. Baldyr’s quest to harness Zélie’s strength sends Zélie, Amari, and Tzain searching for allies in unknown lands.

But as Baldyr closes in, catastrophe charges Orïsha’s shores. It will take everything Zélie has to face her final enemy and save her people before the Skulls annihilate them for good.

Please Note: There may be spoilers for the previous books in the Legacy of Orisha series (Children of Blood and Bone and Children of Virtue and Vengeance). Read with caution if you have not finished those books. This contains no spoilers for Children of Anguish and Anarachy. Any plot points given away are no more in depth than that disclosed in the blurb. 

“When you have nothing left – when the world has pushed you to your knees, that is when you learn who you really are! That is when you find your true strength!

The Legacy of Orisha series is a series that I have been reading for years. I read the first book in the series, Children of Blood and Bone back in 2018, and I absolutely loved it. I’ve been dying to see how everything was going to work out for these characters since then. I was so excited to finally see how everything was going to end. I had to read a bit of a recap of the first two books before I dove into this one, as it had just been so long since I read them, but I quickly remembered the key details as I started reading this one. Honestly, I loved this book so much. I’d seen a few mixed reviews of this one, but honestly I loved every single moment.

Children of Anguish and Anarchy picks up right where Children of Virtue and Vengeance left off, with Zelie and a number of other Orisha, kidnapped by an outside enemy. Now the Orisha must put aside their differences, whether they are Magi or Titan, and work together to find their way home, and make it safe again. But will everyone survive this enemy?

I loved every single moment of this book. Honestly, I’d forgotten how much I absolutely love Tomi Adeyemi’s writing. I don’t know what it is about her writing, but it just sucks me in every single time. I couldn’t stop reading and every spare moment I had, my head was stuck in this book. I really appreciated the short and snappy chapters. While they don’t actually have any impact on my reading speed, I feel like I’m getting through the book quicker when there’s shorter chapters. So all the way through, I was like: one more chapter, it’s only short. And I absolutely flew through this book. It was addictive.

Children of Anguish and Anarchy was such a fantastic finale to a fantastic series. I honestly love this series so much, and it has firmly cemented it’s place as one of my all time favourite YA fantasy books. I cannot get enough of it, and I will forever be hoping that Tomi decides to write more in this world as a spin off. This book broke my heart and put it very slowly back together. It’s been a very long time since I sobbed at a book, but that is absolutely what happened here. I loved every heart-breaking moment and would suffer it all over again in a heartbeat. That’s how much I truly love this story and these characters.

My one, tiny gripe with this book is that I felt like the ending was rather abrupt. It ended very quickly after the resolution of the conflict, and I really would have liked to see a few more chapters of ‘after’ to see how everything was and see the characters a little bit more settled into their lives. It felt very abrupt and sudden and that disappointed me a little bit. There was an epilogue but at 2 pages in length, it just left me wanting more. Other than that, I thought this book was pretty perfect. I loved it, and highly recommend the entire series.

“The name of my goddess fills me. It moves something in my soul. Her brewing storm calls out to me like a song. It holds the promise to make me whole.”