T. J. Young and the Orishas: The Gatekeeper's Staff is book one of a series by Antoine Bandele. I was delighted to be chosen for the blog tour by Shealea of Caffeine Book Tours. As I've said elsewhere on this blog, I consider myself a student of all religions including the Orisha religions. The Orishas are worshiped in a number of Caribbean spiritual paths as well as in Brazil.
I do have to say that the last time I mentioned the Orishas on this blog was in 2018 when I reviewed The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark here.
The figure on the cover looks like he could be a teen-age image of the Orisha known as Olokun who is supposed to have been chained under the sea. There are chains surrounding this underwater figure. Yet the novel is called The Gatekeeper's Staff. The Orisha of doors and gates is Eshu who is as prominent in this novel as Olokun.
There are a number of other Orishas who are mentioned in this book including a few who I needed to look up on Wikipedia because I wasn't familiar with them.
One of the Orishas that I needed to look up was Olosa, the Orisha of lagoons. Some say that Olosa's messenger is an alligator and others that it's a crocodile. There are differences between alligators and crocodiles that aren't particularly relevant to this review.
I took author Antoine Bandele's quiz about which Orisha I'm aligned with. The quiz can be found on Bandele's website here . My quiz result was that I'm aligned with Orunmila, the Orisha of wisdom according to Bandele. Others believe that the Orisha of wisdom is Obatala. See this You Tube video here.
I went along with Bandele's idea that his adolescent protagonist, T.J., was himself a new Orisha. Some readers might find this view problematic or incomprehensible. The concept that there are new Orishas, or that a human being could be an Orisha would be unthinkable in certain spiritual approaches.
I enjoyed reading The Gatekeeper's Staff. It is my hope that T. J. Young and the Orishas will be a long and successful series.
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