Blood at the Root
by LaDarrion Williams
Labyrinth Road, 2024. 419 pages.
Review written April 29, 2025, from a library book.
2024 Cybils Award Finalist, Young Adult Speculative Fiction
Blood at the Root is about a boy who learns he has magic in his veins and can go to a school for others like him and learn to control and wield his powers. Sound familiar? In this case, the boy is a Black boy named Malik, who’s been living in foster care for ten years, since he was seven. That was when his power manifested, his mother disappeared, and he remembers dead bodies in the noise and confusion. So he’s always felt responsible for his mother’s death.
But now Malik is seventeen, and he’s been emancipated. He’s going to break his young foster brother Taye out of a bad situation and head to California to start a new life.
But things don’t go as planned – and Malik’s powerful magical grandmother finds them. She sends Malik to the oldest HBCU of them all – Caiman University, where the students learn to harness their power. Malik gives in to the scheme after he’s sees pictures of his Mama at Caiman. Maybe he can find out what actually happened to her.
Meanwhile, kids are disappearing both inside and outside Caiman U, and some are being found with their magic drained. There’s talk that the dreaded Bokors are coming back, and rumors that Malik’s mother knew something about them.
You’ve got your traditional good-vs-evil story as Malik tries to learn to use his magic as well as figure out whom he can trust and which side is the good side.
This isn’t a kids’ magic school. It’s a university, and there’s plenty of cussing and partying, plus plenty of violence and some sex. I personally prefer fantasy novels where I understand how the magic works and have a better idea of where the plot is going and the motivations of the characters. This one did keep me reading. Where Blood at the Root shines is how the magic is rooted in Black history and culture. I love the dedication:
This is dedicated to the seventeen-year-old Black boy who the world told he doesn’t have magic.
Lemme let you in on a lil’ secret: you do.
It is in your blood; it is nestled deep in your bones.
It is in the very soil you walk on that’s been blessed by the sweat and tears of your ancestors.
Walk in it with pride.
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