Blood Debts by Terry J. Benton-Walker

This was such an amazing contemporary YA fantasy with powerful magical families, intergenerational curses, and deadly drama in New Orleans. If you love magic, mystery and amazing LGBTQA+ characters this is definitely a book you shouldn’t miss! I can’t wait for it to be released in April next year so that everyone has a chance to read this marvelous story.

Blood Debts follows the sixteen-year-old twins Clement and Cristina Trudeau, who are heirs of a powerful and magical New Orleans family that has been dethroned from being magical royals after being wrongfully accused of murder and for causing a magical massacre thirty years ago. Cristina, once a talented and dedicated practitioner of Generational magic, has given up magic for good after an ancient spell she used killed their father. Now, with her mother sick from a hex curse, and her brother acting out, she finds herself being pulled back into the world of magic to solve the old murder and prevent another massacre.

I really loved this rich and amazing story, so full of love and family, healing, a mystery to solve, revenge and forgiveness! The world building was so well done and unique, with the best mix of urban fantasy, Voodoo and Southern mystic. It was also full of amazing and diverse characters, who were all so fleshed out and deeply human, so full of flaws, anxiety, regrets and internal anger, and not clearly good or bad. I also really appreciated the authentic New Orleans descriptions and the whole Southern vibe.

The magic system in the book was inspired by Voodoo, but as the author explained in the acknowledgements, the names and spells were fictional, since the real-life practices of Afro and Afro-Latinx rituals are sacred and should be treated as such. I really loved how you could tell that Terry J. Benton-Walker relied on his own experiences when writing this story, and how he made the main characters strong and proud queer and black, and with a though black matriarch as the queen. He also didn’t shy away from difficult topics such as systematic racism, the right to decide about life and death (or even raise the dead), loss of a loved one, grief, guilt and abusive behavior (like using a love spell to force emotions upon someone) or other morally grey actions. But it was nevertheless a heartwarming and uplifting story with strong and lovable characters!

All in all, this was a brilliant, addictive, unique, wonderfully queer and absolutely magical YA fantasy that I cannot recommend enough!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor/Forge for the ARC of the book, which I have voluntarily reviewed.

Rating:
5 stars

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Author info:
Terry J. Benton-Walker