User Profile

This is an unexpected novel about disability and family and writing and fame and stories. Subjectively, I don't think it all cohered in the way I wanted. The story within a story felt particularly heavy-handed, and it weakened the impact of the titular theme's exploration. I can imagine it landing for other people, but it's all just a bit too loose for me.

There is a meta element near the end, which I think the reader can choose how to interpret, although the real answer feels besides the point. It feels there to reinforce the book's larger point about what death of the author means—Okorafor is stating here that "author, art, and audience [...] create a tissue, a web, a network". The fact that this is such a personal work for Okorafor along multiple dimensions only adds to this feeling, as they seem inseparable from the book itself.

There wasn’t another button to not accept. And if she didn’t tap it, maybe the doors wouldn’t open, and she’d end up talking to customer service for an hour. Besides, she was alive and the SUV had done its job. When one got into an autonomous vehicle, one knowingly accepted certain risks.

This is a minor point, but there is some wild techno-optimism on the page. It's hard to tell how much of this is a deliberate nod to science fiction's own default optimism, and thus is more of a storytelling device to embellish the "realistic" point of view. I could especially see this with a given reading of the meta element at the end.

There's just so much of this opinion woven throughout: early in the novel, Zelu uses an automated vehicle: "she could be like a robot with built-in wheels ready to carry her whenever she wanted." I thought the above quote about being forced to click accept to escape said automated vehicle might be the beginning of a more critical arc, but it was not to be. On top of that there's also ai robot exoskeletons, a (creepy to my eyes) billionaire with a private spacecraft company, and experimental space vaccinations (to add chromosomes for essential amino acids) that Zelu accepts without hesitation. This book isn't really a story about tech cynicism though, no matter how much of that I am bringing as a reader. If anything, this optimism ties into how Zelu's family continually denies her agency and respect and are always airquotes protecting her from the perceived dangers of the unknown and novel.

This tech optimism is so at odds with my own opinions that it's quite jarring. I can't read this unvarnished optimism abstractly—I am compelled think about the "tissue, web, and network" of capitalism and exploitation that these technologies are contextualized in, even as they create possibilities and accessibility.

I have such mixed feelings about Daughter of Crows. It's a GRIMDARK (imagine a heavy metal font and growly voice saying this) fantasy story that centers around a school for assassins.

This book is driven by carefully deployed character reveals. It's told from the perspectives of the aging woman Rue (hiding her assassin past), the childhood of Eldest (in a gaslighting abusive childhood manor), and the violent assassin academy via Bek (100 girls enter! three leave!). It's not clear to the reader who all these perspectives are, or if they're the same person, or how they might be connected. This uncertainty gives the author space for surprises and concealing information and connections from the reader until the right moment. It's nothing I haven't seen before, but I think it's quite effective.

The shifting perspectives also help with the pacing. Maybe I'm a bit exhausted by magical school stories, and over the course of five years of assassin school, we only see a couple of scenes per year, rather than this just being a school-driven story. Moreover, the other perspectives often provide immediate context for the next chapter of a different perspective, making me more invested in the different story arcs.

On the negative side, the worldbuilding is quite weird. Suffice it to say that all of humanity has been relegated (or chased?) to the two islands of Gog and Magog, and the rest of the world is unknown. In a religious sense both the furies and Morrigan exist, literally. There are also mentions of Yggdrasil and Christ and Saraswati. It's very big on the triple goddess idea. Oh yeah, there is also an afterlife ferryman.

There is a part of me that says that if you're going to riff on preexisting myth and stories, then you should pick one and do it well. This hodgepodge of stories feels quite weak. I think the best you can hope for is that this is some alternate/future/virtual world where there is some reveal or reasoning why all of this fits together. Overall, I find myself more skeptical than intrigued.

The other thing I think makes this book weaker is the existence of necromancy. Sure, there's a good moment early. However, despite loads of people dying in this book, the main character literally dies several times and is sometimes even chased into the afterlife by other characters. It feels a little too much like protagonist plot armor.

I think this all makes it tough to recommend, even if there are bits I really enjoyed.

I found out about this book because I saw mcc talking about it.

Slow Gods is a weird little book. It's about space politics, focusing around an impending supernova event that is going to wipe out many planets. It's from the perspective of Mawukana, who is just a pilot and seemingly exists more on the edges of the story, and yet is also ultimately at the heart of things.

I wonder whether it is possible to exist as a person at all without measuring yourself against others. I wish sometimes that I was strong enough to be myself in company without company turning me into something else. I wonder who that person would be, and am sometimes grateful never to find out.

Maw is also an odd, monstrous protagonist. He is not particularly driven, and is affected strongly by the expectations of others. It's not that he doesn't have feelings, but more that many times he needs to be gently nudged into action by the people around him.

As a narrator, Maw also likes to periodically intersperse some anthropological digressions on the nature of ritual, or arcspace pilots, or gender across various societies. It can be a blunt instrument for worldbuilding, but it's in character for Maw as a curious academic. It's also always just long and infrequent enough to fill in some details or whet my own curiosity, and this style works for me.

Ultimately, this is a story about grief and death and connection. It's a caricature of capitalism and the ineffectiveness of ways that countries (fail to) confront capitalist empires. I was gripped by it the whole way through and quite enjoyed it.