I'm a big fan of P. Djèlí Clark's adult fiction - he does such good stuff with interesting premises and appealing characters and cinematic action. So I was curious to see what he did with a middlegrade work. Sadly, Abeni's Song didn't work for me. I guess the interesting premise is still sort of there - a fantasy take on the trauma of imperialism and colonialism and slave trade in Africa - but the characters failed to appeal to me and the action felt flat. (And so! many! exclamation points! you cannot make it exciting by fiat!) It felt like a book written with an adult view of How To Write For Kids instead of a good story that happened to be kid-suitable, if that makes sense. It got a little better once the plot started and still better with an interesting development a little shy of the halfway mark (although I feel like that could have been explored in a more compelling way if Clark didn't seem to think middlegrade meant maintaining a sort of emotional shallowness) but the first couple of chapters were just painful. (Not helped by a first chapter with a potentially interesting viewpoint character who is immediately yanked away and substituted with the much less interesting protagonist.) I would have given up on it if it wasn't on the Hugo ballot - I almost did a couple of times anyways. Alas.