Masquerade by O O Sangoyomi

Masquerade by O O Sangoyomi

O O Sangoyomi's debut novel, Masquerade, was published in mid 2024 and immediately drew me in with the beautiful cover. It was named British Fantasy Award winner, NAACP Image Award Finalist, People Magazine's Best New Book, a Goodreads Choice Nominee, Book of the Year by Audible, and is on the Best Of list for PBS, Readers Digest, and Amazon, among others. It deals with bullying, confinement, animal cruelty and death, sexism, slavery, suicide, toxic relationships, violence and death, blood, kidnapping, grief, murder, fire resulting in injury, gaslighting, war, classism, and injury detail.

Ododo is a blacksmith in Timbuktu. She was born into the trade, her mother was also a blacksmith - one of the few jobs available to women who are unmarried and without other family. A job looked down upon by nearly everyone with an added bit of superstition thrown in, many people think they are witches. When Ododo meets a charming vagrant and gives him one of the metal daffodils she crafts, she never imagines that she would see him again. But the man is no mere vagrant, he is the warrior king of Yorubaland, Eramo. Taken by Ododo, he has her kidnapped and brought to his capital city Sangote, where he announces that she will be his wife. Ododo is taken from a life in which there was never enough to go around to one of excess, but this life has vipers hiding in the grass, ready to strike when she least expects them. Ododo must learn quickly what it means to be wife of the Alaafin before this future she has glimpsed and is desperate to hold on to is ripped away from her.

Let me start by saying that I listened to this book. The narration was done by Ariel Blake and she was phenomenal. She has a lovely voice and was so easy to listen to. Second, this book is said to be loosely based on the myth of Persephone. Allow me to tell you that it is very loosely based, Ododo is kidnapped by Eramo who she calls the King of Death. If you are looking for a retelling or a story that resembles the original myth, this is not that. That being said, I really enjoyed this book. It caught me right from the beginning and kept me interested the entire time. I think most of that was the artful way the narrator told the story. It does get slow at times and the plot is a bit hard to explain since it mostly has to do with Ododo learning about the inner workings of the royal city. The setting is wonderful, Sangoyomi does a good job of describing without being bogged down. The secondary characters are pretty well thought out, although I could've used some more depth to a few of them that were meant to be Ododo's villains. Ododo starts as off incredibly naive but she didn't annoy me much at the beginning because you could understand why she was so gullible. As the story went on, I did get a bit irritated with her then but I still cheered for her. Eramo is tougher. He's charming, and he did charm me, but you soon learn that he is mercurial and proud to a fault, too. As for the ending, it surprised me and I enjoyed it, although I am not sure that I quite buy it. I would've loved for Ododo to make more character progress throughout the book, it felt like so much of it was put in at the very end.

I'm giving Masquerade by O O Sangoyomi 4.25 stars out of 5. If you don't mind a book that is not as fast-paced but is still quite entertaining, and can sit through a bunch of Eramo's lovebombing, then I would definitely recommend this book. I'll be looking forward to the author's next book scheduled to come out late 2026.

For more from O O Sangoyomi, check out her website at https://www.oosangoyomi.com/

Pairs well with egusi soup and planting daffodils for the spring.

Favorite quotes:

"She had worked with far too many precious metals to be impressed by the silver of the stranger's tongue."

"But so far, all I had seen of him was a flirtatious vagrant or a lovesick lunatic."

"An ember was never as feared as a flame, yet it burned just as hot." *Note - I do really like this quote but I have some doubts about its veracity.