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Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death
Jun. 30th, 2011 12:17 amI'm surprised I picked this book up. I'm not surprised because of the title or the concept, which are both eye-catching, but because it had some of the shoddiest marketing and design Daw ever gave a first (with the publisher) novel -- which is a shame, because it was a great book and kind of a rare beast in the science fiction/fantasy section of the bookstore. I'm a little surprised it didn't get marked magical realism and shunted into literary fiction, and I wonder if the kinds of readers it would've found there wouldn't've appreciated it better. Anyway, the main reasons I call it shoddily done are its cover -- which is really "this is a generic book about Africa, it glows red-orange with a desert backdrop and the silhouette of some black woman who does not really resemble the described protagonist of the book" -- and the lack of copyediting, which missed commas and word choice here and there in a way that made it look like someone just didn't go over it with the finest-tooth comb.
Even so, how often do you read a chosen-one story set in post-apocalyptic far-future Sudan about a mixed-race girl born of war rape who learns sorcery to face her evil biological father and bring salvation to her genocide-suffering people? I think that question answered itself. It's undeniably true that the only places that ever seem to get far futures in science fiction are Western ones, or occasionally East Asian. It's also undeniably true that racist, imperialist writers tend to implicitly treat places that are war-torn as though they're still in the Middle Ages, like technology and social sophistication can't coexist with bloodshed and violent atrocity; Okorafor is of Nigerian descent, though, and seems to have gone to effort to know what the hell she is talking about regardless, so this is not that kind of book.
It's set in very dark times in the future, and the threat of violence is always hanging over characters' heads (there are many violent or disturbing scenes that leave nothing to the imagination, including one involving female circumcision); it doesn't have a gratuitous or gritty tone to it, though, but plays out like a mythic-legendary story about a chosen leader born in horrible circumstances in the middle of a genocidal war and going through a bildungsroman to master her powers and defeat her evil father. Except it's not Luke Skywalker, it's a young mixed Arab/African (sort of; ethnicities have shifted in this future) woman with blonde hair that marks her as forbiddenly mixed-race, and it's not Darth Vader, it's a cruel fascist imperialist soldier to whom magic and sexual assault are both just means to a genocidal end. Basically, if you dig that kind of SFF mythic-arc story in general, then I recommend picking up Who Fears Death, because it's a hell of a lot more fresh than the usual Western tropey take on that and the fact that it is inherently about genocide, rape, war, racism, imperialism, gender, and healing makes it a lot more powerful.
But that's all praising the subject matter, not the story Okorafor specifically wrote -- so also, the story's really interesting and gripping! It suffers some pacing issues during long Onye Learns Magic and Onye Has To Pass Another Test sections, but otherwise stuff keeps happening and the reveal of information happens with perfect timing -- I sucked in a breath in surprise and dread at a couple events -- and it's definitely full of action and eventfulness. I liked all the characters aside from one, though I think it'd be spoilery to elaborate; if anything the story's main weakness is that it's a chosen-one-is-special story so inherently the moral involves a lot of other people being ultimately less worthy than the chosen one, but I knew that going in. Aside from that, it's sad, fairly riveting, sometimes beautiful, and definitely thought-provoking. I wish there was more stuff like this coming out in science fiction and fantasy.
Even so, how often do you read a chosen-one story set in post-apocalyptic far-future Sudan about a mixed-race girl born of war rape who learns sorcery to face her evil biological father and bring salvation to her genocide-suffering people? I think that question answered itself. It's undeniably true that the only places that ever seem to get far futures in science fiction are Western ones, or occasionally East Asian. It's also undeniably true that racist, imperialist writers tend to implicitly treat places that are war-torn as though they're still in the Middle Ages, like technology and social sophistication can't coexist with bloodshed and violent atrocity; Okorafor is of Nigerian descent, though, and seems to have gone to effort to know what the hell she is talking about regardless, so this is not that kind of book.
It's set in very dark times in the future, and the threat of violence is always hanging over characters' heads (there are many violent or disturbing scenes that leave nothing to the imagination, including one involving female circumcision); it doesn't have a gratuitous or gritty tone to it, though, but plays out like a mythic-legendary story about a chosen leader born in horrible circumstances in the middle of a genocidal war and going through a bildungsroman to master her powers and defeat her evil father. Except it's not Luke Skywalker, it's a young mixed Arab/African (sort of; ethnicities have shifted in this future) woman with blonde hair that marks her as forbiddenly mixed-race, and it's not Darth Vader, it's a cruel fascist imperialist soldier to whom magic and sexual assault are both just means to a genocidal end. Basically, if you dig that kind of SFF mythic-arc story in general, then I recommend picking up Who Fears Death, because it's a hell of a lot more fresh than the usual Western tropey take on that and the fact that it is inherently about genocide, rape, war, racism, imperialism, gender, and healing makes it a lot more powerful.
But that's all praising the subject matter, not the story Okorafor specifically wrote -- so also, the story's really interesting and gripping! It suffers some pacing issues during long Onye Learns Magic and Onye Has To Pass Another Test sections, but otherwise stuff keeps happening and the reveal of information happens with perfect timing -- I sucked in a breath in surprise and dread at a couple events -- and it's definitely full of action and eventfulness. I liked all the characters aside from one, though I think it'd be spoilery to elaborate; if anything the story's main weakness is that it's a chosen-one-is-special story so inherently the moral involves a lot of other people being ultimately less worthy than the chosen one, but I knew that going in. Aside from that, it's sad, fairly riveting, sometimes beautiful, and definitely thought-provoking. I wish there was more stuff like this coming out in science fiction and fantasy.
