Tag: Nnedi Okorafor

September Reading Roundup

This will be a short post. Honestly I feel a bit silly writing it at all, because I only read two books in September, and I just reviewed both of them this week. But for consistency’s sake, here I am.

September was, as I’ve said, a pretty crazy month. I moved down to D.C. at the end of August. I spent the first half of September learning my way around my new neighborhood in Arlington as well as learning the metro system and the route to and from my new workplace. Then I started work at the FCC. That was a whole new kind of exhausting. During law school, I longingly looked forward to the time when I would work a nine-to-five job and have oodles of time in the evenings to do whatever I wanted. This is not how it works. There’s food to be cooked and dishes to be done and vacuuming and general cleanup, and after eight hours of work I’m tired.

I’m really enjoying my work at the FCC. I’m learning a lot—I still don’t feel like I can do anything on my own but I’m understanding what’s going on a little more every day—and I’m exactly where I want to be. But when I get home from work, I’m tired. And on top of that, I spent a lot of time in September finishing revisions for my middle grade fantasy novel. Those are done now, and since then I’ve read four books and I’m onto a fifth. But I only read two books in September.

One was an audiobook, and one was an audiobook for the first half and then Braille for the third quarter and then text-to-speech for the last quarter because I got lazy. Unfortunately, I had mixed feelings about both books. Collage of the covers of the two books I read in September, Abaddon's Gate and Akata Warrior

First, I read Abaddon’s Gate by James S. A. Corey. This was the third book in The Expanse series. After the first book, which was fine, and the second book, which I loved, I found this book to be kind of so-so. I’m not sure if it was because it suffered from being a middle book in the series or if my growing suspicion that this series isn’t for me is correct. I’m going to read the fourth book when I get it out of the library, but if it’s like the third book I might give it up. My full review is right over here.

Second, I read Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okoraforh, the sequel to Akata Witch. I actually started Akata Warrior in August but it took me a long time to get through. There was a lot I liked about this book, particularly Sunny’s relationship with her brother. But it also felt kind of scattered and telly. I admit this might be because of all the times I changed how I was reading it, and I’d definitely be willing to reread this book or read any subsequent books in this world. But on the whole I liked the first book in the series a lot better. And if you’re interested, my full review is here.

And that’s it. I’ve been reading more now that I’m settled into a routine, so expect more reviews soon.

Akata Warrior Review

Cover of Akata Warrior by Needi OkoraforThe 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.