#18-19: Okorafor, Zahrah the Windseeker, The Shadow Speaker

[gwyneira.livejournal.com]

#18: Nnedi Okorafor, Zahrah the Windseeker

Zahrah Tsami, a girl of the Ooni Kingdom, is unusual: she was born dada, with long green vines growing in her hair, the outward sign of mysterious powers nobody seems able or willing to explain to her. She wants to be normal, but her hair makes her different and feared, except by her best friend, Dari. Eventually, Zahrah's powers begin to materialize, and Dari encourages her to test them out. When he gets into terrible trouble as a result, only Zahrah can save him, by entering the most dangerous part of their world and facing all of her fears.

I liked the worldbuilding a lot (plant computers!), and shy but brave Zahrah is a good heroine. I thought the plot was a little episodic, especially in the second half, and never very tense: everything is just a little too easy for Zahrah to achieve. I think it's simply that the book is aimed at a slightly younger audience than I was expecting; I wanted Zahrah's quest to be more complex and difficult, and it turned out to be fairly straightforward. The energy and creativity of the story were more than enough to keep me reading, though, and to take me right on to The Shadow Speaker. (And bonus points for a good Douglas Adams reference!)

#19: Nnedi Okorafor, The Shadow Speaker

It is 2070, and life on Earth has been completely changed after a disastrous nuclear fallout earlier in the century: now in addition to technology, there is magic, and there are magical gateways to another world, Ginen (the world of Zahrah the Windseeker). Certain people have become metahuman, with strange abilities like rainmaking, or speaking to shadows, as Ejii Ugabe is able to do. When Ejii was eight, she witnessed the execution (or perhaps murder) of her power-seeking father by Jaa the Red Queen of Niger. Now that she is fourteen, she must follow Jaa to the other world of Ginen, as they strive to convince the otherworlders not to make war on Earth.

I liked this a lot more than Zahrah the Windseeker; this is not to say that I didn't like Zahrah, because I did, but The Shadow Speaker is much more complex and thought-provoking. Ejii faces a larger threat, and her journey feels more dangerous and tense. I appreciated the focus on Africa, on languages and cultures, and the contrast between our present and this future Earth, where Africa and Australia play a much more central part and America and Europe are barely mentioned, as well as the contrast between Earth and Ginen. It's a fascinating universe, and I hope Okorafor will return to it in future books.