I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.

I was provided both a print and audio ARC of this book via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

Clark has quickly become one of my favorite SFF authors. I love how he weaves culture into his stories and uses sci-fi or fantasy (or both) to deal with real world issues. This is his middle grade debut and he really leans in to African Lore and storytelling. If you pay attention he is really using Abeni's magical journey to tell you about the horrible things that were done historically in Africa. It is one of the things I love about his writing style. He tells you about big and important topics while taking you on an amazing adventure.

As for the narration, the narrator really did a wonderful job with the storytelling aspect of the audiobook. She gave each of the characters a unique voice throughout the book. It took me a few chapters to really appreciate her narration, as I didn't initially appreciate the cadence and pitch she gave to some of the characters. I loved her "narrator" voice though. As the book went on I realized she is the ultimate storyteller, and really gave life to Abeni and her companions. I don't think everyone will appreciate her amazing voice acting, but I think younger readers will be delighted by her voice talents.

This follows Abeni on quite the journey. On her 12th birthday, her village is attacked and everyone she knows and loves is taken away. Abeni alone is saved by an old woman who she comes to know as Asha, a spirit who has protected the village for many years. Abeni wants nothing more than to find her family and loved ones, but to do so she must learn what Asha has to teach her. Abeni has a good bit of character development as the story unfolds as she begins as any 12 year old girl, a bit stubborn and petulant, but she quickly discovers that she has to put aside her own wants and needs if she wants to find those she loves. She is also put in many challenging situations where she has to be brave and make tough choices. Does she always make the right choice? No, but she is always trying to do the right thing, and the friends she makes along the way are there to help guide her and teach her. There are quite a few lessons to be learned, and Abeni always takes them in stride.

The worldbuilding in this book was excellent. Clark gives us a luscious landscape and describes the characters in such detail that you can really get a sense of what they look like but he doesn't go overboard with the descriptions. If you are a fan of folklore any mythology I highly recommend this for middle grade readers, adults, and everyone in between. I think it is written such that any age group can enjoy it.

This is the first book in a series, but I really appreciated that this first part of Abeni's storyline ended with closure. We see that there is more to her journey to come, but this part of the story feels complete. I look forward to seeing what challenges Abeni and her companions faces on the next part of their quest.

I loved it! There is something about the way Djeli creates and shapes a story, infusing it with history, mythology, fun, and compassionate characters that just make me fall for his books every time. Abeni's Song was no different and holds teaching moments for both young and old.

I also enjoyed how the narrator gave themself over to the story, making this listening experience really good.

An ambitiously fantastical and fairly dark middle grade debut from an author I love!

Coming from Clark's other imaginative and fascinating worlds, this book is a bit of a letdown. Its slow pacing and dubious length is a unexpected drag for a middle grade story.

There are plenty of wonderful elements - an epic quest, a magical house, spirits and creatures of many varieties, all topped by a slowly gathered band of companions. The heroes face down the wrongs of the world, refusing to let bad things happen if there's a chance they could change them. Speaking of bad things - there are plenty. Abeni repeatedly has the people she loves ripped away from her, often in violent ways. While some of those are resolved more happily, the journey is far from over at the resolution of this book.

Perhaps my favorite thing about this story is the great message threaded throughout of refusing to stand by while evil happens. Abeni never fails to try her hardest to help others, even while dealing with the frustration of more capable people claiming helplessness.

The audiobook narration may work for kids but was a struggle for me to get through. Character voices are not distinct, falling into one or more of three variations: a high pitch, a croaky rasp that made my throat hurt to hear, and a laboriously slow and halting speech pattern. More than once I was surprised by the verbs 'screamed' or 'shouted' following ordinarily delivered lines. Whether the fault lies with emotion or with energy I'm not sure, but the narrator's style just didn't work for me.

This book!
Honestly it had everything I want in an adventure fantasy. Magic, incredible metaphor, lush world building and great characters.

As her village is gathered for a festival warriors storm the area and everyone Abeni knows is taken on ghost ships. She is whisked away by a witch and taught magic to prepare her for the journey to save her village and other villages like hers.

Abeni’s Song deals with pretty tough topics for a middle grade: slave trade, child soldiers, blood diamonds but uses magic, mythology, and metaphor to tell the story in an approachable noncondensing way.

Note. I listened to the audiobook. Which I really struggled with. The narrator was a great at the narration portions but the character voices were really difficult to listen to. I don’t know how audiobooks are made or who makes the choices of how to do character voices but they did the mom so dirty. If I had a physical copy I would have switched formats.

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan audio for an advanced listening copy.

I loved this! Reading books with settings and magic systems different from what’s commonly used in western fantasy is so interesting.

Abeni is such a fun character and I found her so adorable. The friends she meets and makes along the way are also just as interesting. I really liked that her growing friend group was (almost) all girls. I feel like often in books like this the group tends to be more boys than girls but that wasn’t the case for Abeni. The relationship between Abeni and Asha is so complicated but done well and I loved that Abeni just kind of became the guardian for more girls along the way.

This book gets the story moving quickly, it didn’t have that expositional drag some books tend to have in the first 20%, which I appreciated.

I only have one personal grievance with the audiobook which is that I was not a fan of the voice acting for Abeni or Asha. But I did like the narration and being able to hear the proper way to pronounce names.

Thank you to NetGalley for making this available in exchange for an honest review!

Five shiny stars for Clark's new book.This book is immediately going to my top 10 middle grade book list. But it is not only good for a middle grade fantasy - it's just plain awesome all around. The only bummer about reading an advance copy of this book is that I am going to have to wait a long time to join Abeni and her found family again for their further adventures. I loved the characters and the African inspired fantasy. Clark did a wonderful job transitioning from writing for adults to writing for a younger audience. I loved the world he created and I can't wait for the next book to come out!
Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for this advance listening copy in exchange for an honest review.

I am so sorry to say that I cannot stand the narration of this book. I simply cannot find my footing - the narrator seems to try so hard to have a multitude of voices but they come across weird and shrill in most cases. I will need to try the e-book version of this because I cannot sit through 9 hours of this audio - when I can't keep track of the story due to this issue. The rating is simply for the narration not the book's content.

Abeni's Song is a middle grade offering from Clark. Having read the Dead Djinn Universe books and enjoyed them, I was interested to start this new story.
After Abeni's village is captured and stolen away, Abeni finds herself snatched away by a witch for a magical apprenticeship, and consumed with the desire to save her family and neighbors from their fate,
I enjoyed Abeni and the friends she made on her journey and think that many readers will as well.
It was difficult to get into the narration, and I had to switch over to the e-book, as I found some of the "voices" that the narrator used very shrill.

The old woman who lives outside of Abeni’s village warned them to leave, but they did not listen. Even so, she takes the payment owed to her by the village - one of their children. As the adults get captured and the children are entranced away by the Goat Man, the old woman protects and takes Abeni away. Abeni begrudgingly begins her magical apprenticeship with the old woman while planning how to make her escape and save her village and everyone she has ever known.

This story is an action-packed adventure that deals with some big themes. The way that Clark is able to weave these things into the story in a way that is easy to digest (at least on a surface or subconscious level) for younger readers was really encouraging to read. Reading should be fun, but it also doesn't hurt if it teaches you something along the way. This book is a great jumping off point for some heavier conversations about related issues plaguing our world today.

There is a lot of world building to be done in this story and a lot of it happens through Asha, the old woman slash witch who whisked Abeni away from her village. It was all necessary in order to inform the reader of the world, but it did get to be a little long-winded at times - though I imagine that younger readers would probably enjoy it!

Speaking of enjoyable things, I love a story with a found family! Each of the characters is different and has different end goals, but they come together in the hopes that will make it easier for them to reach those goals. Watching their relationship develop is fun, especially when some of them can’t help but bicker and fight and insult each other. What's a family without some squabbles now and then?

For the most part, I really enjoyed the narrator. Characters were given different voices which helped to distinguish them from each other while listening. One complaint that I do have however is the variance in speed. Some characters spoke so quickly that it was hard to understand while others spoke incredibly slowly with (what felt like) long breaks between words at times.

Disclaimer: I received an advanced copy of this audiobook from the publisher for free and have voluntarily written this review.

I am yet again here to talk about a book I WISH was around when I was younger. Is my subconscious actively pushing me to heal my inner child? After reading A Master of Djinn, I decided to gladly read anything written by P. Djèlí Clark. When I saw that his first middle-grade novel was available on NetGalley I JUMPED on it. First of all, fantasy inspired by pre-colonial West Africa? Immediate yes. Abeni is the ultimate middle-grade character who is both frustratingly stubborn and inescapably endearing. I can see 11 year old kids reading this story and having visceral reactions to the characters' choices and dialogue.

This book features P. Djèlí Clark's signature storytelling with masterful world-building, integrating elements of history and mythology. The character development is strong, settings vivid, and the stakes are high making this an overall enthralling read. The magic system is intricate, but not too complex that younger audiences won't be able to comprehend it. I just KNOW a 6th grade me would've made this book my whole personality.

I read half this book through audio and half on ebook, and both were immersive experiences. Funmi James was the perfect choice for this audiobook as she artfully differentiated each character's voice with unique inflections. So excited for Abeni's Song to be published on July 25th!

Actual rating 3.5★

Abeni’s Song is a Middle grade African-inspired Fantasy. We follow Abeni, young girl whose entire village was taken by the mysterious Witch King. Saved by an old woman that her townsfolk call a witch, she begins a reluctant magic apprenticeship and sets out on a mission to save her friends and family.

What I loved most about this book is the setting and the very rich way the world was built. The book is very plot heavy, although not extremely action packed – it felt more quest-like with a steady thrum of a sense of adventure. I quite enjoyed the different places Abeni found herself in and the vivid way Clark illustrated them.

Abeni’s character arc was really lovely to read too. It was a very gradual progression where she grew into herself and learned to to care for more than her own wants. She nicely stepped up into a more responsible role that the plot forced her into. She met a gaggle of girls along the way and it was really lovely to read the friendship that blossomed between them. I do wish the secondary characters were more concretely characterized as I feel like their personalities were very surface level.

This is Clark’s first Middle Grade book and unfortunately it is very telling as there were certain times that it felt a little too mature as well as having certain points in the novel that felt as if it was just a little bit contrived for its middle grade audience. Middle graders would definitely have a lot more trouble following the lengthy prose-heavy novel compared to other middle grade books.

This problem lent itself a little more clearly in terms of structure- for example, chapter length seemed targeted to a more adult audience. It took me close to 5 hours of read time to finish the book and chapter length averaged 20 minutes of read time. I doubt a 10-year-old would enjoy sitting and reading a chapter for that long. Additionally, there was A LOT of exclamation points. If I read the book out loud to a child I’d read it with all the inflection that the exclamation points imparted but I do not think that the abundance of punctuation was necessary to make the book appealing to a middle grade audience.

Overall, I enjoyed the story but I do think there’s quite a bit to improve on for its target audience., The world building, our main character, and the plot intrigues me enough I am excited to find out what happens next. Thank you to Netgalley and Tor Publishing for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoy P Djeli Clark and I enjoy more the narration part in the audio version. She has had Channie Waite narrate a few of her books and was hoping the same for Abeni’s Song. That being said I could not finish this audio version. The narration of the dialogue was great and the narrators voice is beautiful, however the voices are awful. When I envision a person from a tribal background , I think of the rich quality of their voices. The flow of voices that are lyrical. This is none of that. They are screechy and forced. I’m sorry to give such a harsh review, but as much as I enjoy reading the book, I dislike the audio version of this. The voices are forced and sound cartoonish.