Reviews

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

librarylandlisa's review against another edition

5.0

FABULOUS novel. I am going to read this entire series, but I am having to pause in between to review newer books. Give to middle grade/YA border readers. Baby swears throughout and some smooching but no sex. Great for actual middle grade age

dandelionsteph's review against another edition

I liked one of the author's other novels, Ikenga, so I had high hopes when it came to this book. However, it has several immediately-apparent problems, to the point it seems like it was her first book. (For example, two books by first-time authors have similar issues: Skandar and the Unicorn Thief by A.F. Steadman,  as well as Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans by Isi Hendrix)

The first chapter/prologue was in the first-person, but later chapters were in the third-person, giving a non-representative idea of the book's point-of-view. The first chapter portrayed important magical events in the main character's life out-of-order, in a disjointed way. There was also something off about the font or formatting which made it difficult to get immersed in the world. The narration has telling-not-showing problems, like describing how the protagonist feels instead of showing it in her actions or showing her internal dialogue directly. (e.g., p.7, "She felt like punching each of them in the mouth".)

The use of interstitial passages of nonstandard format, such as "Fast Facts for Free Agents", p.5., would work better if integrated into the plot, such as it being something the protagonists are reading.

skishimoto56's review against another edition

adventurous challenging inspiring mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

noellepb's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

bookish_leslie's review against another edition

dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No

2.0

My rating scale, for reference:

• 1 Star: Hated it
• 2 Stars: Didn't like it
• 3 Stars: Meh
• 4 Stars: Liked it
• 5 Stars: Loved it

 
I obviously didn’t care for this book, given my rating. It wasn’t all bad, of course. For example, I appreciated how knowledge was seen as the topmost goal of the Leopard People, as opposed to the goal of material gain in the real world, and how Leopard people were supposed to love and embrace their physical shortcomings. I liked, too, how not everything was glossed over and made perfect - for example, how (spoiler)

Sunny’s team didn't win the soccer match

. It was also interesting to read a book that wasn’t North American or Eurocentric, though I found the places, cultural references, and language/slang harder to follow because of this. 

So yes, there were some things about this novel I enjoyed, but overall, I found the story to be fairly dark and off-putting. Here were some of the reasons why:

• The sexism and misogyny throughout the book was horrific.
  
  
• The adults in general were terribly abusive. Canings, floggings, beatings - didn’t matter if it was parents, teachers, or magical authorities; they all were abusive in some way. And then the kids beat each other up too. Gee, I wonder why, given the example they were set? 
  
  
• The plot was pretty weak. The characters mostly floated from one scene to another without any progression or development.
  
  
• The characters weren’t very believable. Other than their constant in-fighting, they usually acted much more like 16 or 17-year-olds than the 12ish-year-olds they were supposed to be. 
  
  
• It was infuriating how information about Leopard people was so slowly dripped and gate kept, and never ended up being well-explained. 
  
  
• I didn’t understand how or why Sunny’s sun sensitivity was (spoiler)
  suddenly and magically cured, especially with the emphasis within Leopard society of embracing shortcomings.
  
  
  
• So much emphasis was put on how Leopard magic wasn’t genetic…except that it seemed to be mostly genetic? There were a lot of inconsistencies like this throughout.
  
  
• The adults were constantly putting the children at risk for no discernible reason, and it bugs me to no end when children are (spoiler)
  sent in to save the day when there are always more qualified adults. Why!? 12 year old children were sent in this book to confront a serial killer while the adults just sat back and watched. These kids weren’t given any information or training or help. Just suddenly summoned and sent in to do their best. And if they died? Oh well. Greater good and all that. But weirdly, they did succeed. I'm obviously glad they did, but how were they successful when so many others more experienced than them had failed? More detail was given to their irrelevant soccer game than to this climax.
  
  
  
• There was no cohesion in the tone of this book. One minute I might be reading about an adorable bug who loved to be praised for the things it made out of trash, and the next I might be reading about small children getting their eyes gouged out by a serial killer. WTF?

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Violence, Racism, Child abuse, Bullying, Death, Kidnapping, Misogyny, and Sexism

Also: child endangerment

girishaaaa's review against another edition

adventurous challenging funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

microbemasher's review against another edition

adventurous inspiring medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

I wanted to like this book more, but it failed on a few key storytelling elements for me. I don't think it did a good enough job establishing the stakes of the situations the characters were in, and I think it struggled to support its own ideas.

What I liked:
The books setting was completely unique. I loved being outside of the familiar world of western fantasy, and it felt like a breath of fresh air to see this genre from a different perspective.

The book also tackled a lot of difficult themes, such as ableism, bullying, racism, global income disparity, etc.

What I disliked:

The magic system:
Disclaimer: I normally love soft magic systems. Many of my favorite series have soft magic systems. But I feel like in order to make a magic system work, there must be some idea of what it costs to do magic and what separates advanced magic users from non-advanced magic users.

I ended this book without knowing any of these things. The lack of any clear cause and effect for the magic system killed my immersion. Instead of feeling like the world in the story was real, I felt like things happened because the author wanted them to happen.

This was particularly egregious at the end, where

the final confrontation ends when the main character banishes an extremely powerful evil spirit on pure instinct, and explicitly says she has no idea what she did or how she did it. The main character is at a beginner skill level in magic, has never banished a spirit, and suffers no consequences beyond being a bit tired afterwards

. This, along with

the character who was actually skilled in banishing spirits developing the power of ressurection off camera

, shattered any illusion of there being stakes in the story since it felt like the author could and would have her characters suddenly become capable of whatever they needed to do in the moment.

The plot:
The ending also ties into my feeling that the story did not support its own ideas. I felt frustrated because

we spent a lot of time discussing the main cast's particular magical aptitudes and how they needed to use their strengths and weaknesses as a team to survive the final confrontation.  Having the main character instinctively develop a powerful banishment juju while her team member who is skilled at spirit banishment did sometjing else offscreen felt like it undermined that whole theme

.

The "supporting your own ideas" issues are not solely in the ending. I felt like the author frequently built up and dropped ideas throughout the book. Most notably, the main antagonist of the book felt like a dropped idea. The book felt divided on the two stories it wanted to tell, the chatacter-driven story of coming of age and finding acceptance with the discovery of the main characters magic powers, and the plot-driven

hunt for the serial killer, Black Hat

. Rather than combining these ideas into shared scenes, they both seem to compete for screen time in the book. A lot of character development happens in the traditional way; at sporting events, malls, late night excursions with friends. I wish more character growth went hand in hand with engaging with the plot. I wish we had had more scenes where

the team works together to track Black Hat and find out what he's doing and why. It felt super anti-climactic that the team was gathered up, told where he was and when to go there, and sent on their merry way

. Because these two storylines are split througout the book, I felt like the book effectively had two endings:

the ending of the character story (the soccer game) and the ending of the plot story (the confrontation with Black Hat)

. That gave the impression that, rather than working together, the character story and plot story were actively taking time away from one another.

The characters:
The characters felt very two-dimensional and static. What you saw at character introduction was more or less what you got for the whole book. 

jollyjord's review against another edition

Dumb. Couldn't stand the characters with overly exaggerated stereotypes. Not that I even found it offensive, just stupid. Couldn't take the book seriously beyond that point. 

the_eucologist's review against another edition

3.0

As the first in a series it does a fairly good job setting up the world its characters inhabit. I even loved how cleverly cultural tensions are referenced even if they don't necessarily determine or shape narrative trajectories. But it's hard to come away from this feeling as though it isn't written with an overly cinematic approach, where large set pieces and plot points are prioritized over stable character development. Sunny in particular seems a somewhat distant figure even if on paper her experiences being marginalized mirror mine. I suppose I am mostly frustrated that the novel wants to be both a tale about being a "fish-out-of-water" but also acts as if its characters--and, crucially, readers--know everything about the world we are thrust into. The logic of the latter conspires to keep us and this newest Oha coven in the dark when is clearly needed are clarity and illumination.

trinibabee's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny lighthearted mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5