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Nnedi Okorafor: Three in Ginen
Dec. 1st, 2009 09:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanguinity(Two novels and a short story. The numbering is wacky because I'm keeping two different lists, one for books and one for shorts.)
7. Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Zarah the Windseeker.
I've said it before, and if the odds continue, I'll be saying it again: this comm has saved YA fantasy for me. Especially quest fantasy, which is a subgenre I had pretty much sworn completely off from boredom and irritation.
Rather than writing my own review, I'll point you to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rootedinsong's review: the world is too lush, and too daydreamy, for me to want to wrestle with writing up a description.
And even though I know that I totally shouldn't want to go backpacking in The Forbidden Greeny Jungle -- Zarah's adventures made all of mine feel very soft -- I totally totally want to. Totally. Even if I have to put up with her faulty guidebook (and really, didn't that perfectly capture the faulty-guidebook experience? Not useless enough to toss, but oh, how much time is spent trying to sift the useful information from the was-he-even-here? misinformation) I totally want to go.
But I'm going to need to learn to climb trees first.
However, speaking of guidebooks, tree-climbing, and The Forbidden Greeny Jungle...
16. Nnedi Okorafor, "From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7".
Precisely what the title says: the lost diary of TreeFrog7, one of the authors of The Forbidden Greeny Jungle Field Guide. TreeFrog7 and Morituri36, in the Forbidden Greeny Jungle. Exploring. And alternately squabbling and rhapsodizing about each other, like what you do when you've been alone together in the backwoods too long.
I'm thinking this one will mostly appeal to fans of the Forbidden Greeny Jungle, and should probably be read after Windseeker -- it doesn't really strike me as a stand-alone. But Forbidden Greeny Jungle fans will probably want to click that. (rootedinsong? It's about the CPU plants!)
(BTW, Okorafor's website suggests that there are more Ginen shorts out there than just this one. Does anyone know how many or where any of them are published?)
8. Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, The Shadow Speaker.
Set in the same multiverse as Windseeker, but in Earth's Niger, a hundred-odd years into our future, when Zarah's world and Earth have inexplicably begun to merge. Asrootedinsong points out, this is a darker book than the Windseeker, what with technology and ecology upsets, people being displaced (both within worlds and between worlds), and according social backlashes.
Like all novice shadowspeakers, Ejii is pushed by the shadows to travel -- in this case, to pursue the local ruler/warlord and avert an impending war. But traveling is also part of a shadowspeaker's development: grow or die, but don't overreach your abilities-of-the-moment by too much, or that will kill you, too. (There is a parallel I am groping for between the shadowspeakers' journeys and the various metamorphoses in Butler's novels, but I am having trouble wrapping my arms around it. Other than the sense that growing is a dangerous, reckless, nearly-uncontrolled process, wherein you dig deep and deeper, and hope that the digging deep doesn't break you. And then discover that the digging deep did break you: ultimately, the question isn't whether you break, the question is whether, having broken, you lay down and die or become something else. The Shadow Speaker isn't anywhere near as grim as most/any of Butler, but I do have a strong sense legacy here.)
Oh, and another thing about this book that pleases me: it's messy. The warlord Ejii is pursuing, Saurauniya Jaa, is a strong believer in problem-solving via decisive bloodshed: our first introduction to her is when she decapitates Ejii's father in front of Ejii. However, while Jaa is Ejii's main antagonist, Jaa herself is not evil, and this is not a story of White Hats and Black Hats: Jaa is Ejii's mentor, and their conflict is over whether Jaa's ruthlessness is more compassionate than Ejii's desire to prevent bloodshed.
And like Windseeker: oh, the worldbuilding! Onion! The lions! The storm! Forests that spontaneously appear and disappear! Eee! (And did I mention the lions? The lions!)
7. Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Zarah the Windseeker.
I've said it before, and if the odds continue, I'll be saying it again: this comm has saved YA fantasy for me. Especially quest fantasy, which is a subgenre I had pretty much sworn completely off from boredom and irritation.
Rather than writing my own review, I'll point you to
rootedinsong's review: the world is too lush, and too daydreamy, for me to want to wrestle with writing up a description. And even though I know that I totally shouldn't want to go backpacking in The Forbidden Greeny Jungle -- Zarah's adventures made all of mine feel very soft -- I totally totally want to. Totally. Even if I have to put up with her faulty guidebook (and really, didn't that perfectly capture the faulty-guidebook experience? Not useless enough to toss, but oh, how much time is spent trying to sift the useful information from the was-he-even-here? misinformation) I totally want to go.
But I'm going to need to learn to climb trees first.
However, speaking of guidebooks, tree-climbing, and The Forbidden Greeny Jungle...
16. Nnedi Okorafor, "From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7".
Precisely what the title says: the lost diary of TreeFrog7, one of the authors of The Forbidden Greeny Jungle Field Guide. TreeFrog7 and Morituri36, in the Forbidden Greeny Jungle. Exploring. And alternately squabbling and rhapsodizing about each other, like what you do when you've been alone together in the backwoods too long.
I'm thinking this one will mostly appeal to fans of the Forbidden Greeny Jungle, and should probably be read after Windseeker -- it doesn't really strike me as a stand-alone. But Forbidden Greeny Jungle fans will probably want to click that. (
rootedinsong? It's about the CPU plants!)(BTW, Okorafor's website suggests that there are more Ginen shorts out there than just this one. Does anyone know how many or where any of them are published?)
8. Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, The Shadow Speaker.
Set in the same multiverse as Windseeker, but in Earth's Niger, a hundred-odd years into our future, when Zarah's world and Earth have inexplicably begun to merge. As
rootedinsong points out, this is a darker book than the Windseeker, what with technology and ecology upsets, people being displaced (both within worlds and between worlds), and according social backlashes. Like all novice shadowspeakers, Ejii is pushed by the shadows to travel -- in this case, to pursue the local ruler/warlord and avert an impending war. But traveling is also part of a shadowspeaker's development: grow or die, but don't overreach your abilities-of-the-moment by too much, or that will kill you, too. (There is a parallel I am groping for between the shadowspeakers' journeys and the various metamorphoses in Butler's novels, but I am having trouble wrapping my arms around it. Other than the sense that growing is a dangerous, reckless, nearly-uncontrolled process, wherein you dig deep and deeper, and hope that the digging deep doesn't break you. And then discover that the digging deep did break you: ultimately, the question isn't whether you break, the question is whether, having broken, you lay down and die or become something else. The Shadow Speaker isn't anywhere near as grim as most/any of Butler, but I do have a strong sense legacy here.)
Oh, and another thing about this book that pleases me: it's messy. The warlord Ejii is pursuing, Saurauniya Jaa, is a strong believer in problem-solving via decisive bloodshed: our first introduction to her is when she decapitates Ejii's father in front of Ejii. However, while Jaa is Ejii's main antagonist, Jaa herself is not evil, and this is not a story of White Hats and Black Hats: Jaa is Ejii's mentor, and their conflict is over whether Jaa's ruthlessness is more compassionate than Ejii's desire to prevent bloodshed.
And like Windseeker: oh, the worldbuilding! Onion! The lions! The storm! Forests that spontaneously appear and disappear! Eee! (And did I mention the lions? The lions!)
