Oathbound - Tracy Deonn (Book Review)

5 Stars on StoryGraph

One of my goal books to read this year was Oathbound by Tracy Deonn, the third book in her The Legendborn Cycle series when it came out. And it came out in New Zealand in the middle of March, a couple of weeks after it had released in the USA. Honestly one of the most frustrating things about living in New Zealand - sometimes you don’t get same day releases.

The Legendborn Cycle follows Bree Matthews who upon starting the Early College program at UNC-Chapel Hill, discovers a secret society known as The Order of the Round Table whose members include the descendants of the knights of King Arthur. Bree quickly makes the connection between The Order and her mother’s death and sets out to find a way in to discover the truth. In The Order, Bree makes friends with Nick Davies and William Sitterson, and a reluctant ally in Selwyn Kane after it’s revealed that neither Nick nor Bree are who The Order thought them to be. At the same time, Bree encounters users of Rootcraft, the type of magic that Bree’s mother had deliberately hidden from Bree. While The Order is overwhelmingly White, the Roocrafters that Bree meets are Black. As someone who stands in both practices, at the end of Bloodmarked, Bree makes the decision to go with The Shadow King, the person who has haunted her ancestors since her several times over grandmother Vera and the greatest enemy of another of Bree’s ancestors, in order to better learn her magic as there are members of The Order who would rather Bree was dead and cannot understand the Rootcraft abilities that Bree possesses while Bree has found that the ancestral work required in Rootcraft to be ineffective in controlling her abilities.

Oathbound differs from both Legendborn and Bloodmarked as it features multiple points of view. We get the view of events from William as he accompanies Nick on a quest after Bree’s disappearance, from Natasia as she helps Selwyn, Maraiah as she and her family make their own investigations into finding Bree, and Bree. When Nick, Maraiah, and Bree all end up at the same event, the book switches to just being Bree’s perspective. I think it was a really interesting way of exploring who Bree is to other people and what cycles are needing to be broken, not just for Bree, but for others who are also stuck in the same cycles. I also liked how it was emphasised that the systems that Bree and her friends are in, aren’t broken but rather they are doing exactly what they are designed to do.

Going into Oathbound, I thought this was the last book of a trilogy. So when I read the ending, I was shocked. I was reading it on my lunch break and couldn’t believe that the ending was the ending. I had to do a quick search to find out that there is going to be a fourth book the series which helped alleviate the shock I was feeling. I can’t wait for it.