A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Akata Witch is a children’s fantasy novel set in a marvelously vivid modern Nigeria, in which a society of magical Leopard People operates out of sight of the Lamb People, which is to say, us.

Twelve-year-old Sunny is already used to living in two worlds, as she’s both Nigerian and American, and a black person who looks white due to being an albino. So when she discovers that she’s a free agent Leopard Person – born with magical powers, but without magical parents – it’s all part of her cultural between-ness. Both that and her albinism turn out to be key to her powers: Leopard People who are physically disabled or non-neurotypical are often extra-powerful, with magical abilities which relate to, but do not erase, their disabilities. (This trope is hugely controversial, so I’ll just say that I thought it was sensitively handled. Your mileage may vary.)

Sunny is initiated into the world of the Leopard People, learning to summon her spirit face and make an invisibility spell from a sheep’s head (she does this quite openly in her kitchen, and feeds the leftovers to her family as soup), and rewarded for knowledge gained by showers of magical coins and friendly magical insect companions. The story ambles along episodically, as Sunny learns the ways of the Leopard People, makes friends, and tries to balance her new magical life with the need to stay in school and not let her family find out. One of my favorite parts of the book is the excerpts from a magical how-to book Sunny reads, written by a snarky, superior Leopard Person who looks down from a considerable height upon both Lamb People and free agents.

At a somewhat late point, she is told that she and her buddies need to stop a serial child-killer; they don’t do much about it until they are abruptly told that the time is right, and then they hastily confront him in a battle which, while dramatic, was too rushed to feel truly climactic. I could have done without that whole storyline. I was much more interested in seeing Sunny poke around her strange new world, being traumatized by witnessing bizarre Leopard People duels and conscientiously praising her pet magic wasp’s artistic creations lest it get so disappointed in her as to commit melodramatic suicide before her eyes, as magical wasps are apparently wont to do.

I also would have liked to have seen more attention paid to Sunny’s family. I couldn’t tell from her narrative whether the level of corporal punishment tipped over into abuse or not, but the situation with her father seemed so bad, emotionally if nothing else, that I wanted it to be dealt with more than it ever was. That and the serial killer stoyline were tonally different from the magical dangers in the rest of the story in a way that never quite meshed.

This is the third book I’ve read by Okorafor. It has many of the same virtues of The Shadow Speaker (my favorite so far) and Zahrah the Windseeker: a playful sense of humor, a fantastic sense of place, and a packed-to-the-brim sense of invention. It also shares the flaw of a rushed and poorly set up climax. Her worlds and their funny, clever details are fantastic; her prose and plotting don’t reach the same heights. (I read a little bit of her adult novel Who Fears Death, before setting it aside for a time when I’m more steeled for depressing content, and the prose in that much more was much more impressive.) Akata Witch is fun but the worldbuilding, while charming, didn’t feel as deep as it did in her more profoundly transformed settings.

Akata Witch

As you can see, I have mixed it up a bit.

Please vote for the book YOU would most like to read (and hopefully review on your own blog), not the book you think would be most entertaining for ME to review. I would really love to see more reviews on other people's blogs, for more publicity for the books in question.

My review will go up in the first week of April. I hope. Read more details on the books here:

Akata Witch. I have really enjoyed everything I've read so far by Nnedi Okorafor. This looks likely to be in the same playful, inventive spirit of her other YA and children's novels.

Racing the Dark. Only $5.50! I enjoyed Alaya Johnson's urban fantasy Prohibition novel, Moonshine. (Only $6.00!)

The End. Five queer kids vs. the apocalypse; only $5.99 on Kindle.

A Strong and Sudden Thaw. Ice Age! Dragons! Gay love story! Only $6.99 on Kindle. This has a print edition, but it's expensive... but I had two volunteers offer to mail their print copies to book club participants, so it would be available that way.

Annie on My Mind. I have been meaning to read this for ages.

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend. Five words: Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad.

[Poll #1822926]

This review was written by tool_of_satan, who kindly offered to guest-blog as I got so swamped in schoolwork that I haven't had time to read either of the month's book selections yet. (I have four papers due on Monday, in Law and Ethics, Process, Personality, and Trauma, and have written only one of them - the shortest.) Thank you very much, tool_of_satan!

Libyrinth is the first young-adult novel published by Pearl North, but she has written other fiction as Anne Harris (none of which I have read). It opens in the eponymous Libyrinth, which is a giant labyrinth filled with books. Which I have to admit is a winning combination. Labyrinth? Books? Sign me up.

Our initial viewpoint character is Haly, a sort of assistant librarian (sorry, "Libyrarian"). Like most of the inhabitants she was born and raised in the Libyrinth. Unlike most of them she is an orphan, her parents having vanished in the stacks when she was very young, and unlike any of them the books speak to her. No, really: if she's near a book she hears it narrating itself in her head, at least when the author finds it convenient (to be fair, there are only a few spots where she is inconsistent about this). All of the books she hears are English-language works we are all familiar with, except for a book written by the Libyrinth founder which provides useful information when the author feels like it.

Haly is in a bad mood because the Eradicants are making their annual visit. The Eradicants venerate the spoken word and regard printed words as dead and therefore evil. They haven't been able to conquer the Libyrinth, but they get to show up once a year to burn some books, chant, and get fed. During all this grim foofaraw we get introduced to Selene, the librarian Haly assists, and Clauda, a kitchen worker who is Haly's best friend. No points for deducing that the three of them will shortly be off on an adventure. And so it happens: within a few pages we find out that Selene has discovered the location of The Book of the Night (which contains the secret of how to make the tiny, near-inexhaustible power sources that run all the advanced machinery), Selene tells this to the head librarian, the head librarian sells this secret to the Eradicants to save his nephew (who runs a city they have conveniently just conquered), and our three protagonists ride out to get the book first and save civilization, or at least literature.

The early part of the book continues at this breakneck pace up until the three women find the book (in a sort of branch Libyrinth), discover it's written in an unknown language, then get attacked by Eradicants and separated. I think the pace is responsible for the problems some people have reported getting into the book. I had problems myself. Starting a book with plenty of action is fine, but it's necessary to get the reader interested in the situation and the characters at the same time. This requires maybe a bit more skill than the author has. A few pages to establish the characters in the normal life of of the Libyrinth, before the main plot really kicks in, might have sufficed.

In any case things calm down a bit once the characters are separated. Haly is captured by the Eradicants and hauled off to their citadel, where she is treated well once they realize that her ability to hear books means she is their prophesied Chosen One who will bring balance to the Force make the dead words live again. Exactly what that means is, as usual with prophecies, open to interpretation. Haly manages to convince some of the key figures that it's now OK to learn to read (conveniently, she has a book, confiscated from secret Eradicant readers). She also does some thinking about the difference between the Libyrarians, who spend all their time studying books and let few other people have any, and the Eradicants, who spend lots of time developing teaching songs to help the local peasantry.

Haly's sections are handled reasonably well (barring logical inconsistencies which I go into below). One could certainly argue that the Eradicants she talks to come around too easily, but based on my admittedly limited knowledge, it's actually fairly realistic; people seeing a miracle (i.e., Haly being able to tell them what a book in a locked box says) which their religion has prophesied are going to be in a state where they're vulnerable to epiphany conversions.

Meanwhile, Clauda and Selene escape and go to Selene's home Greek-flavored city-state, which is ruled by her mother. Selene's mother (who has chosen another woman as heir) schemes to gain power for herself, but Clauda manages to steal her magical ancient flying craft from its cave and show up at the climactic battle in front of the Libyrinth. The Eradicants (with Haly in tow) attack the Libyrinth and there is much shooting, but in the end Haly manages to achieve an entente; she convinces all the leading Eradicants they need to learn how to read, and the Libyrarians that they should help the people instead of sitting around the stacks all day. I am glossing over lots of detail here.

You may be wondering, since this was a book club selection for an LBGTQ month, where the LBGTQ content is. I was wondering the same thing for much of the book. The content is limited to one or two paragraphs in the middle: Clauda sees a naked girl and thinks about how nice it is that in the Libyrinth, no one cares that she is attracted to girls. That's it except for some hand-holding which is not necessarily meaningful. Well, and the soldiers in the city-state are all women and one can make certain assumptions, but we're not told or shown anything.

I am of two minds about the perfunctoriness of this. On the one hand, the book is not particularly about sex or relationships. There is nothing wrong with having an adventure novel where one of the viewpoint characters just happens to be a lesbian. Furthermore, she is young (15 or 16) and spends a lot of the book not feeling very well. On the other hand, the straight viewpoint character at least gets to kiss a boy. An attempt at equity would possibly have been better.

My major problem with the book was not this, but the fact that the background makes no sense. Which would be less of a problem if the background didn't drive some of the major plot elements.

( Cut for lengthy nit-picking )

On the plus side, the prose is decent if not exceptional, and after the early part North keeps things reasonably interesting. If she spends more time working out the logic of her plots she might produce something I can recommend unreservedly in the future. (There is a sequel to this, but I haven't read it.)

“Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California,” the court said. The ruling is limited to California. The issue will be bounced up to the Supreme Court, which may rule as soon as next year.

In other LGBTQ-related news, I got swamped by schoolwork and have not yet had a chance to curl up with either of the Permanent Floating YA Diversity Book Club selections for last month. (Theme: YA fantasy with lesbian heroines.) Reviews will appear, I hope, later this week. Has anyone else had a chance to read either or both?

There is a sweet deal at Amazon on Libyrinth now - only $4.29! Haly is a Libyrarian, one of a group of people dedicated to preserving and protecting the knowledge passed down from the Ancients and stored in the endless maze of books known as the Libyrinth. But Haly has a secret: the books speak to her.

Tripping to Somewhere is $5.99 on Kindle. If you don't have a Kindle, I believe you can still buy it in that format and read it on your computer. It's everyone's glittery fantasy turned real: to follow the Carnival's mystic band of beautiful people as they defy every limit and dance through history -- all in search of a good time.

[Poll #1808812]

Read more about the books on Amazon:

Tripping to Somewhere

The End

Libyrinth

Shadow Walkers

A Strong and Sudden Thaw

ETA: All these books are available on Kindle. Tripping is out of print in print form, but used copies from Amazon are not too expensive. Thaw has a print edition, but it's expensive... but I had two volunteers offer to mail their print copies to book club participants, so it would be available that way. Libyrinth and Shadow Walkers are in print.

This really speaks to how few YA sff novels with LGBTQ protagonists are out there in the US, right?

Has anyone posted a review of Hiromi Goto's Half World for this month's book club? I haven't seen any.

My review will go up late this week or early next week, to give you all time to catch up. I know things got holiday-hectic for many of you. I will then post a poll for next month's selection.

Does anyone have a preferred theme and/or books they'd like to nominate? We have so far had "YA sff with an LGBTQ protagonist" and "YA sff by an author of color, with a protagonist of color." Repeat themes are fine, of course.

The December selection for the Permanent Floating YA Diversity Book Club is Half World, by Hiromi Goto.

Please read and, for maximum publicity and visibility, write a review in your own blog any time between now and the first week of January. If you post a review on your own blog, please link it here. I will review it for more discussion in the first week of January.