12 Books Like Children of Blood and Bone to Read Before the 2027 Movie
There’s a particular ache that only one kind of book leaves behind: you close Children of Blood and Bone and suddenly every ordinary fantasy feels monochrome. You want a magic system built from real culture instead of recycled medieval Europe. You want a Black girl at the center of the storm — not beside it, not in the background of it. You want stakes that feel personal and enormous at the same time. And you have time: the Children of Blood and Bone movie doesn’t hit theaters until January 15, 2027, so the wait is a gift — a long runway to fall in love with the next shelf of the genre first.
This list is built to match the Legacy of Orïsha itch: West-African-inspired worlds, Black girl protagonists, high-stakes quests, and magic with weight. Every author here is Black, and every book below was chosen for a specific kind of Children of Blood and Bone reader — from the epic-worldbuilder fans to the younger readers who’ll finish the trilogy and need somewhere to go next. For the wider landscape, our hub of essential Black fantasy books covers the full genre beyond the YA lane.
Epic Worlds with West-African-Inspired Magic
Legendborn — Tracy Deonn (2020)
After her mother’s death, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews stumbles into a secret society of UNC students descended from King Arthur’s knights — and discovers her own buried connection to the magic they hunt. Deonn braids Bree’s grief, her Black Southern roots, and the Arthurian mythos into one of the strongest YA debuts of the decade, and the book won the Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe Award for New Talent.
Read it for: secret societies remade through a Black girl’s eyes — the Shadowhunters energy, except the heroine knows who she is.
Raybearer — Jordan Ifueko (2020)
Raised in isolation by a mysterious mother known only as The Lady, Tarisai is sent to compete for a place on the Crown Prince’s Council of 11 — bound to its members by the Ray, a connection deeper than blood. The catch: her mother has magically compelled her to kill the prince. Court intrigue, lyrical prose, and a genuinely moral crisis at the center.
Read it for: the politics and heartbreak — if you loved the push-pull of Zélie and Inan’s shifting loyalties, Tarisai’s story scratches the same spot.
The Gilded Ones — Namina Forna (2021)
Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in a kingdom where a girl’s worth is decided by a purity ritual — and when she bleeds, her blood runs gold, the color of a demon. Instead of execution she gets a choice: fight for the emperor alongside girls like her, or die. Forna, a Sierra Leonean American author, wrote the book she couldn’t find as a child, and it entered the New York Times bestseller list on release.
Read it for: righteous anger. This is the darkest, most cathartic pick on the list — sisterhood, bodily autonomy, and a war cry in book form.
Contemporary Fantasy with Real-World Stakes
Wings of Ebony — J. Elle (2021)
Rue, a Black teen from Houston, has her world upended after her mother’s murder: she’s taken to Ghizon, a hidden land of gods, and discovers she’s half-god, half-human — the only one of her kind there. Denene Millner Books published the instant New York Times bestseller, which pits ancestral magic against both divine cruelty and real-world violence.
Read it for: the girl caught between two worlds. Rue’s fight to protect both Houston and Ghizon echoes Zélie’s refusal to abandon either her people or her magic.
A Song Below Water — Bethany C. Morrow (2020)
In present-day Portland, Tavia is a siren hiding a voice that can compel anyone, and her best friend Effie is haunted by demons of her own. In Morrow’s world, sirens are feared and despised — and nearly every known siren in recent years has been a Black woman. This is the most Digest-coded book on the list: a story about Black girlhood and sisterhood wearing fantasy like a second skin.
Read it for: magic as metaphor done right. If the oppression of the maji is what stayed with you, Morrow makes it hit even closer to home.
Dread Nation — Justina Ireland (2018)
The Civil War ended not with a surrender but with the dead rising at Gettysburg — and now Black and Native children are forced into combat schools to kill the shamblers under the Native and Negro Reeducation Act. Jane McKeene, fierce with a scythe and nearly finished at Miss Preston’s School of Combat in Baltimore, just wants to go home; a conspiracy in the city has other plans. Ireland’s alternate-history horror is ferocious and funny by turns.
Read it for: the sharpest heroine on this list. Jane’s voice will carry you through anything, and the genre mashup keeps every page moving.
Beasts Made of Night — Tochi Onyebuchi (2017)
Onyebuchi’s debut conjures a Nigeria-inspired city where outcast kids shoulder the sins of the rich and powerful — literally eating them, in a ritual that protects the ruling class and damns the children who perform it. It won the 2018 Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel and earned a spot on Time‘s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time.
Read it for: the grim, gorgeous worldbuilding. A duology (followed by Crown of Thunder, 2018) for readers who want their fantasy to bite.
The Black God’s Drums — P. Djèlí Clark (2018)
In an alternate 1884, New Orleans is a free Black city of airships and orishas, and street-smart Creeper hears the storm goddess Oya in her head. A roughly 100-page steampunk adventure that was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards and won the Alex Award — pure adrenaline with West African spirituality woven through every chapter.
Read it for: the orisha connection. Creeper’s bond with Oya is the closest thing on this list to Zélie’s bond with the gods of Orïsha, and it works as a perfect short bridge into Afrofuturist reading more broadly.
The Magic-School Classic: Akata Witch — Nnedi Okorafor (2011)
Sunny, an American-born girl living in Nigeria, discovers she’s part of the Leopard Society — a hidden magical community — and begins training in the magical art of Nsibidi alongside her friends. Often shelved as the “Nigerian Harry Potter,” it’s really its own thing: funny, grounded in Igbo culture, and built for slightly younger readers. If Zélie’s story sparked a love of learning-magic-through-training, this is the gentlest next door in.
Read it for: the training sequences and the friendships. Okorafor’s Africanfuturism in warm, readable form — and the first book in a series.
Middle-Grade Gateways (Ages 8–12, and the Grown-Ups Who Love Them)
Honest framing: these three are middle grade, not YA — but don’t let that stop you. If you finished the trilogy and a younger reader in your life is about to discover it, these are the handoffs. And plenty of YA fantasy fans read them anyway.
Amari and the Night Brothers — B.B. Alston (2021)
Thirteen-year-old Amari Peters’s brother Quinton has gone missing, and the only clue is a nomination for tryouts at the secret Bureau of Supernatural Affairs — a hidden organization managing magicians, yetis, and mermaids. Amari must compete against kids who’ve known about magic their whole lives while her own supernatural talent gets deemed illegal. A New York Times bestseller pitched as Men in Black meets Artemis Fowl, with #blackgirlmagic all the way down.
Read it for: the chosen-family magic-school rush, and a heroine whose determination rivals Zélie’s.
Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky — Kwame Mbalia (2019)
The one honest exception in a girl-heroine list — Tristan is a boy, but this book belongs here. Seventh grader Tristan Strong is sent to his grandparents’ Alabama farm after his best friend’s death, where he accidentally punches a hole into Alke, a world of African-American folk heroes and West African gods — John Henry, Brer Rabbit, the trickster Anansi — all fighting to survive. Published under the Rick Riordan Presents imprint, it won a Coretta Scott King Author Honor.
Read it for: the folklore. If the Yoruba gods of Orïsha made you curious about more, Alke is the richest, warmest next stop.
The Jumbies — Tracey Baptiste (2015)
Corinne La Mer, eleven, growing up on a Caribbean island, doesn’t believe in jumbies — malevolent spirits from the forest — until the beautiful Severine enchants her father and moves to claim the island for her kind. Based on the Haitian folktale “The Magic Orange Tree,” Baptiste’s adventure is scary in the best middle-grade way, with friendship and ancient magic doing the heavy lifting.
Read it for: the folklore angle again, from a different shore — and a heroine who fearlessly solves her own problems.
Start with the Sequels?
Before you branch out, finish the trunk. Tomi Adeyemi’s debut was published March 6, 2018 by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, inspired by Yoruba mythology and the Black Lives Matter movement — and it’s the first of a complete trilogy. Children of Virtue and Vengeance followed in December 2019, and the finale, Children of Anguish and Anarchy, arrived in June 2024, debuting at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Adeyemi herself built the world over three books, and the film — directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, arriving January 15, 2027 — will be adapting all of it. Reading the whole Legacy of Orïsha trilogy first means you’ll walk into the theater with opinions. That’s the point.
The Shelf Is Waiting
Twelve books, twelve doors into the same feeling Children of Blood and Bone gave you: a Black girl at the center of the magic, a world built from culture instead of cliché, and stakes worth losing sleep over. These authors — Deonn, Ifueko, Forna, Morrow, Okorafor, Ireland, Onyebuchi, and the rest — are the writers our Black women writers guide celebrates: the generation remaking fantasy from the ground up, one heroine at a time.
Start with the trilogy. Then pick your door. By the time the lights dim on January 15, 2027, you’ll be fluent in the language this genre is speaking.