Tracy Deonn | March 19, 7 p.m. | Witherspoon Student Center, Raleigh
In a time when readers are increasingly searching for fantasy stories with diverse characters and unconventional worlds, perhaps it’s no surprise that Tracy Deonn’s engrossing debut novel, Legendborn, became a New York Times bestseller.
The young adult book—about Bree, a Black teenager who gets pulled into a magical war—stayed on the bestseller list for nine weeks when it was released in 2020, reflecting the popularity of the genre. Now, Deonn is about to release Oathbound, the third book in the Legendborn Cycle, and is planning a fourth installment.
Deonn, who grew up in North Carolina and attended UNC-Chapel Hill, doesn’t shy away from her Southern roots. Ahead of the book’s March 4 release and March 19 stop at NC State University, the award-winning author shared some thoughts over email about Legendborn, her changing relationship to the phrase “Black Girl Magic,” and life in the South.
INDY: What can we expect from Oathbound? No spoilers!
Tracy Deonn: Great question! At the end of Bloodmarked, the second book in the series, we saw the main character, Bree, make a big decision with huge impacts on the other characters in the world. That decision has now isolated her with a major villain, a plotline that plays out with serious consequences throughout Oathbound.
I also recently announced that Oathbound is the first book in the Legendborn Cycle to incorporate multiple POVs [points of view], so readers can expect to experience the inner thoughts and motivations of four characters other than Bree. It was important to me to keep Bree as the focus of the story, so I’m very excited for readers to see how she remains central, even with new voices in the mix.
What drew you to fantasy as a genre? You explore a lot of current social justice issues in your books. How does fantasy help you explore these issues and tell these stories?
Fantasy as a genre does this truly incredible thing where it invites—even demands that the audience loosen their hold on their current reality in order to imagine a new one. Not just imagine that reality but take it seriously and see its stakes, challenges, and possibilities.
I think that makes the genre an extremely pivotal tool in our human storytelling toolbox. Anytime you can ask someone to allow for the unrealized or unseen, and ask them to deeply consider how those elements might impact the world around a character they love, we’re doing the work of making it more possible to reexamine our own world and lives, too.
What do the words “Black Girl Magic” mean to you? Of course there’s a literal interpretation, but many readers also appreciate the way your characters are able to find a power within themselves to create, express, and affect the world around them.
Honestly, my relationship to that phrase has changed quite a bit in the past nearly five years since Legendborn was written. There is a way that “Black Girl Magic” can feel empowering, at least to me, but I also think it can be a problem to be called otherworldly when you are, in fact, a human being with human needs and limitations.
It can be a backward compliment. The deeper I go into this book series, the more I want to show that “magic” is not without cost, both on the page and off.
One of the main settings for the Legendborn Cycle is UNC-Chapel Hill, your own alma mater. Can you tell me about your experience there?
When I was an undergraduate at UNC, I always felt like I was walking through history, and that there were hidden stories and unearthed legends around every corner. Exploring new ideas in a setting as old and nationally significant as UNC certainly added a unique undercurrent of scale and importance to everyday college life.
I feel very fortunate to have been encouraged to ask big, complicated questions and pursue complex answers by the faculty, classes, and peers around me
at the time.
What book(s) have you been reading? Do you have any recommendations for our readers?
I always recommend L. L. McKinney’s A Blade So Black for folks who want to read more contemporary fantasy with a mix of real-world issues and Alice in Wonderland magical lore.
I am looking forward to reading (S)Kin by Ibi Zoboi, which was just published and is a contemporary fantasy novel in verse. For nonfiction, I love recommending The Disordered Cosmos by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, which is a multi-award-winning book about the night sky itself and who gets to dream about it.
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