Title: Who Fears Death
Author: Okorafor, Nnedi
Publisher: DAW Hardcover
Pages: 386
Date Read: 08 November 2017
Bookshelves: read
My Rating (out of 5): ⭐⭐⭐
In this book, Okorafor tells the story, in first person, of Onyesonwu, a child born of rape and magic in post-apocalyptic Africa. Written from Onye’s point of view, we journey with her as she deals with family, sorcery, death, friendship (or lack of), and her nemesis, Daib, who also doubled as her father.
This whole genre of speculative fiction is a completely new ground for me especially since the story is set in Africa and i must say Nnedi did a decent job straddling science with fantasy. It was a pretty good story which centred on magic and gender violence. Nnedi did not spare the readers of sensitive topics such as Female Genital Mutilation and rape; for this, i must commend her efforts.
However, i found the author’s chosen style of simplistic prose a bit too basic. More than half the time, the manner of writing was either too bland or too repititive for me. The pages were, for the most part, lacking metaphors, boring, even cringeworthy- that i found myself asking the question of which age demographic the author intended this book for . Besides, i also felt the book was too long. As anyone should feel after reading over 350 pages of bland prose.
Ingenious, creative but bland prose.