Annual reminder that I don't really vibe with YA. This is some kind of post-apoca Nigeria wherein our teenage Yoruba heroine has magic powers that the evil occupiers are trying to stamp out. She gets drafted into the army, and has to make it through training alive, so she can escape to join the rebels.

The Yoruba cultural stuff is about the only highlight in what feels like very paint-by-numbers YA, with worldbuilding that doesn't especially make sense because the author is trying to do too many things. A lot of the book is about child soldiers, using a lot of real world stuff that happens to child soldiers in Nigeria, but that doesn't jive with the army draft plot device, and the whole thing is a mess.

It was on the Canada Reads long list, and I probably would have trudged on if it were on the short list. It's not, so back to the library it goes.