Redemptor

Jordan Ifueko
Completed 11/15/2024, Reviewed 11/15/2024
4 stars

The second book in the Raybearer duology was just as good as the first book, if not a little better.  The real standout was the world building, specifically, the really interesting and creative Underworld.  It made the ending very powerful.  I was further impressed when I read the Afterword from the author.  Raybearer took fifteen years to create.  Then having published the first book, she had to crank out the second book in less than a year.  And it was all done during the time of the pandemic and the biggest black movement in the US since the ‘60s.  Somehow, Ifueko produced a nearly flawless conclusion.  This book was nominated for several awards, including the Andre Norton Award for YA genre literature. 

The book picks up where the first left off.  Tari has claimed the title of Empress, which has been suppressed since the founding of the empire.  She has offered herself in lieu of children as a sacrifice to the Underworld to rescind the treaty with the demons of the Underworld.  She has two years to win over and anoint her chosen eleven as Daro did.  However, she is haunted by the souls of the hundreds of thousands of children who have been sacrificed over the centuries, demanding she pay for the sins of the empire.  And she must do all this without dying in the Underworld herself.

The journey for Tari is to learn to be an empress and balance it with doing the best possible things for her people.  Her goal is to provide peace, justice, and unity.  However, she is hampered by her quest to anoint her chosen eleven.  The stipulation put on it by the demons of the underworld is that the eleven must be the eleven rulers of the nations making up the empire.  So Tari has a long lesson in politics and how to use honesty in the best possible way to win over the rulers.  As you would guess, one of the eleven plays games with her, preventing her from completing the quest.  And this one is somewhere between debonair and smarmy.

The good thing about the Tari, though is that while she is occasionally distracted by men, she does not give herself over to them, holding her own moral ground, and working for what’s best for the empire.  That’s not to say she isn’t tempted.  She is, but continues to grow through each experience.  I think she makes for a terrific role model as a strong, black teen girl.  

I give this book four stars out of five.  It’s a little stronger than the first book, getting to the point much more directly.  The climax is terrific.  The prose is good, the character development of Tari is excellent, and the world building, as I said above, is awesome. I still feel that this duology is more for older teens than young teens, but that’s just me.  I’ll probably read more of Ifueko in the future.