Realities of the Fantasy: Violence and Trauma in Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone

Abstract

Young Adult Fantasy Literature is one genre that has received very little attention in academia so far. If one is to ignore the immense scholarship that has been created on the Harry Potter books, Young Adult Fantasy literature remains almost unacknowledged and without a definite definition on its own. As a result, the genres of fantasy literature and Young Adult literature have been pivotal in providing an integrated definition to this field. In basic terms, Fantasy literature means a digression from what the reader believes to be the ‗real world‘. ―Fantasy in modern literature depends upon realism in literature: it depends upon the reader's ability to recognise a commonly acknowledged, or normal, world and to recognise descriptions as pertaining to, or failing to pertain to, normal conditions. The initial impact of fantasy is its deviation from the norm‖ (Apter 111). The ‗fantastic‘ elements are employed not only to challenge the presumptions about the normal world but also to challenge the traditional narratives of it.