The second book I read in September was Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor. I read the first book, Akata Witch, last year and then again in May. You can find my full review of Akata Witch over here. As usual with my reviews of sequels, I can’t promise no spoilers for the first book in the series, so that’s the place for you to start.
A couple disclaimers about this review. It took me a long time to read Akata Warrior. Not through any fault of the book. I just had a lot going on. I started it in mid-August, when I finally got the audiobook out of the library. But I didn’t finish it by the time the audiobook expired, and the waiting list was really long, so I picked it up in Braille. But I’m really slow at reading books in Braille these days, because I can’t do it while I’m doing something else, and I tend to just fall asleep when I go to bed at night. So as we got toward the end of September, I just turned on text to speech and had my BrailleNote read the rest of the book to me. The long time reading the book and the three different formats I read it in almost certainly contribute to my feelings about this book.
My second disclaimer is that it took me two readings to really love Akata Witch, and that might be the case for Akata Warrior. I’m still on the library waiting list, and if it comes up again I may reread to just see.
Now that I’ve said all that, let’s dive in.
Akata Warrior starts out about a year after the end of Akata Witch. Sunny, Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha have all grown and learned in their powers both individually and as a team. But the end of the world is looming, and they’re the ones to stop it. Adventures ensue. Sunny gets into trouble defending her brother, jeopardizing not only her life but the whole coven and the mission. Sunny also gets separated from her spirit face and loses her powers. There’s also a giant spider and plenty of adventures in the spirit world before we even get to the chaos monster.
As you might have gathered from this description, a lot happens in this book. As usual, I really loved all the stuff about the kids learning their powers. I also really loved Sunny’s character growth. We get more about her family in this book—particularly her brothers—and I loved that. Also, her internal growth when she loses her powers is amazing. There’s this scene when she’s playing soccer in a thunderstorm and grieving the loss of her juju, and it’s just amazing and beautiful.
On the other hand, this book felt more scattered to me than the last one. In the first book, I felt like everything the characters learned played a role in the climax. In this book, when we reached the climax, things were happening, and I was like, “Wait, when was that a thing?” And that made a lot of the book, particularly the ending, feel very telly.
Like I said, it’s entirely possible I would feel differently on a reread of this book, and I’m willing to give it that chance. There also seemed to be at least a possibility of more to come after this book, and I’m on board for that.
On the whole, this wasn’t my favorite book in the world. I definitely liked the first book better. But there was a lot of really great stuff in this book, and it was a good follow-up to the first book. I look forward to giving it another try now that my life has calmed down a bit. As always, let me know if you’ve read this series. I don’t know anyone else who has, and I’d be really interested to talk about it with someone.