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bluejayreads's review against another edition
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
Graphic: Rape, Genocide, Blood, Sexual content, and Sexual violence
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Murder, Animal death, Gore, Infidelity, Excrement, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Body horror, and Child death
Minor: Medical content, Slavery, Incest, and Pedophilia
kylieqrada's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I was so psyched to find a copy of this at Value Village when we were visiting family on the west side. Dr. Okorafor is one of the most iconic names in Afrofuturism, and while this is clearly one of her early works, that doesn't lessen the impact that it has. The writing, although not as developed in style as her later works, is conversational and even funny at times. I liked how that narrative choice cut through the intense topics that this book covers. Speaking of which, CHECK CW'S BEFORE PICKING THIS ONE UP, Y'ALL. Dr. Okorafor pulls no punches, and the ending leaves you pretty much desperate for the second book. I'd recommend it if you can handle the subject matter and don't mind a little bit of an odd tone.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Grief, Hate crime, Incest, Infertility, Infidelity, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Murder, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Racism, Rape, Religious bigotry, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Toxic relationship, Trafficking, Violence, and Xenophobia
dayday_reads's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-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
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Grief, Medical trauma, Misogyny, and Medical content
Moderate: Blood, Body horror, and Rape
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