Reviews with content warning for Incest - Who Fears Death

I don't want to say that I enjoyed this book, because I didn't. The content warnings aren't a joke, and I encourage you to check the list. But I am glad I read the book, especially after also reading the afterword which pointed me to the real-world atrocity that inspired the Ewu(the mixed-race group the main character belongs to). If it had come entirely from the author's mind it would have been too much, but of course it was based in reality, because humans never stop finding new ways to be monstrously cruel to each other.

The thing I liked the most about it was diving into the magic systems(yes, plural - there's the more commonplace juju, and also the sorcery that the main character learns to wield), particularly that they were explained enough to give me the flavor without being explained to death. I also loved the almost-meta themes surrounding destiny and agency, and the ending of the book was perfect(fight me). Something else I appreciated was that the characters were allowed to be human, with all the flaws, tempers and mistakes that come along with that.

The main thing I didn't like was how much sex and relationship drama was in the story. Once they were adults, it seemed like every chapter someone was having intercourse with someone else and a third person was being salty about it. Realistic? Yes, but not my cup of tea. Also, the way the novel revolved around pregnancy was a bit squick for me, though I'm aware this one is a me problem. Nothing in this point seemed out of character, it just very much wasn't for me. The other criticism I have is that the book was extremely gender binary, which isn't too surprising for a book published in 2010.

Content Warnings

lexi17d's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

3.5

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isotobel's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful mysterious slow-paced

5.0

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bluejayreads's review against another edition

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slow-paced

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

3.0

Note: This review discusses rape in several places because rape is an essential plot point. If rape is a trigger for you, take care of yourself and skip both this book and this review.

I was not all that excited to read this book. In fact, I passed over it several times because that back cover just didn’t sound appealing. But then I read The Book of Phoenix, which happened to be a prequel to this one. I loved The Book of Phoenix, so I decided I might as well give Who Fears Death a shot.

I have a lot to say about this book, and most of it has to do with the book overall. The details were, for the most part, strong. One of the best part of all of Nnedi’s books are the africanfuturism settings that beautifully combines technology just advanced enough from what we have to make it sci-fi with enthralling small villages and great deserts in near-future Africa. The worldbuilding is absolutely stellar.

Where it struggles is everywhere else. The story here feels very much like one of Nnedi’s “woman who is hated and feared for some aspect of how she was born goes on a long journey to nowhere in particular” plots (see Noor and Remote Control), just with more setup – Onyesonwu doesn’t leave the village until over halfway through the book. But this book attempts to give Onyesonwu’s travels in the desert a destination and a purpose. The purpose makes the desert-wandering feeling seem incongruous, and the desert-wandering feeling makes the purpose feel cheap and unnecessary. I just didn’t think it worked.

That’s how the book felt overall – like the story was trying to smash together two very different approaches and not succeeding at either. It took ideas for a plot-focused book – a uniquely powerful main character with a unique appearance who learns to use her innate magic to fulfill the prophecy that she will end the great evil plaguing the land – and tried to shove them into a character-focused story.

I’m using “character-focused” in the loosest sense of the term, because the focus is on only Onyesonwu’s rage. She very clearly has every right to be angry, but that is the only thing that seems to matter in this book. It glosses over interesting plot happenings and interesting character development alike. The story is driven by Onyesonwu getting angry, doing something incredibly stupid (which she usually recognizes was stupid as soon as she calms down), and then having to deal with the consequences.

Who Fears Death is also unrelentingly violent. It’s said right on the back cover that Onyesonwu was born from rape. What isn’t mentioned is that that rape is described in graphic detail multiple times, as well as several other rapes and one attempted rape. There’s also murder, genocide, physical violence, and more, all described with vivid, bloody thoroughness. (There was also some fairly graphic consensual sexual content between two minors, which wasn’t actually violent but still very uncomfortable.) It was very hard to read in many places, but in some ways it felt like that was the point. I mean this in the best possible way, but it felt a bit like the author was using the process of writing this to work through some stuff. There’s a scene in the book where Onyesonwu is trying to convince her village that genocide is really happening and they need to act. Nobody is listening to her, so she uses her magic to broadcast her mother’s experience of being raped to every one of them. In a way, this book feels a lot like it’s trying to do the same thing. There was a strong sense of “All of this has happened to real people in other places, the least you can do is read about it.”

I finished reading this not because I particularly wanted to, but because by the time I got around to thinking about switching to a different audiobook, I was two hours from the end and I figured I might as well finish. The whole story felt flat – not as in without depth or emotion, but as in without variation. There was no rising and falling action, no moments of heightened conflict or moments of respite. Onyesonwu’s rage was constant, the pace was constant, the violence never stopped, and the climax didn’t even feel like a climax because the pace and rage and violence were exactly the same as the rest of the book. I found the ending profoundly unsatisfying, for reasons that include spoilers:

Onyesonwu attacked the antagonist twice with magic and spent half a year walking across the desert just so she could use her rage and her magic to kill him, only to fall in a terrified sobbing heap the instant she saw him in person, leaving her romantic partner to do the thing she went all that way to do.

What I wanted from this book was something plot-focused. More about Onyesonwu learning to use her magic and the strange spiritual world of the Wilderness, magic as a weapon and a tool with more details about its possibilities and limitations, the prophecy leading to a quest-style journey, a climax that involved a great magical duel between Onyesonwu and the antagonist. I also would have accepted something that made magic and prophecies the backdrop to a friends-to-lovers romance, complicated but unbreakable friendships, an antagonist-to-surrogate-father relationship with her magic teacher, and self-reflection and love and advice from friends leading to personal growth and fewer rash actions. But Who Fears Death tried to do both at the same time, and ended up making something that wasn’t satisfying on either level.

Content Warnings

boehmography's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Content Warnings

andrewbenesh1's review

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challenging dark emotional fast-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

4.5

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