Abeni’s Song by P. Djèlí Clark
Abeni’s Song is the Middle Grade Fantasy debut of beloved and award-winning SFF-author, P. Djèlí Clark. I love reading Middle Grade and have found a lot of joy over the years within the genre.
As soon as I heard about this, I knew I had to read it. I’ve really enjoyed Clark’s writing in the past and was super interested to see what he would do in the MG-space.
In this story we follow Abeni, a young girl, who on Harvest Festival day, loses everyone in her village to raiders and a man playing a cursed flute. The villagers are marched away, lured by the song, to ghost ships set for distant lands.
Abeni isn’t sucked in by the spell though. Instead she is whisked away by the old woman who lives in the forest abutting her village, reputed to be a witch.
Although Abeni feels like the witch’s prisoner, she has in a way been saved and her unwanted magical apprenticeship begins. Still, even though she isn’t being harmed, Abeni is distraught and heartbroken over what happened to her village and her loved ones.
Over the course of the story, Abeni learns about magic, history and herself, all while focusing on her mission to rescue her people and bring them home.
Abeni’s Song is a solid story, with plenty of room to grow as the series continues.
I love and respect P. Djèlí Clark tremendously as a Fantasy writer. He’s incredibly imaginative and I love some of the dark imagery he conjures up through his stories. There’s definitely some of that beautiful, darker imagery here.
I am also excited he’s branching out into the Middle Grade space for the first time. It’s important to have this type of representation and culturally-influenced stories for young people to discover, but overall, this one was just okay for me.
IMO, this didn’t feel like a Middle Grade Fantasy. It read more like an Adult Fantasy with a young protagonist. The chapters were quite long and more heavy-handed in the settings, descriptions and inner thoughts of our MC, than with action, witty dialogue or fantastical elements.
Because of this, I didn’t find myself enjoying this as much as I have some other Middle Grade Fantasies. It’s still a great, well-developed story, with strong character work, but just in comparison with other stories in the space, it was a little more challenging to work through.
With this being said, there is so much to love about this book. Abeni is a memorable character, who really matured over the course of the story. I know so many Readers are going to love and connect with this.
Thank you so much to the publisher, Starscape and Macmillan Audio, for providing me with copies to read and review. Clark is such a phenomenal writer and I look forward to picking up more of his work in the future!