Customer Reviews

Who Fears Death?

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
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Set in an alternate/post-apocalyptic/futuristic African desert (with magic) "Who Fears Death" opens with a teenage Onyesonwu at her father's funeral. Grieving, she briefly and unintentionally starts to bring him back to life. She is a sorcerer, feared and hated because of her powers and her parentage. Her abilities, though spectacular, mostly endanger her and cause her suffering. But they also lead her on a quest to save her mother's people from impending war, slavery, and eventual genocide.

The story is non-linear and framed as a more mature Onyesonwu's last words. Though complex and exotic, the way it's told makes everything clear and easy to follow, with background introduced just when we need to know it.

In its skeleton, the novel is not so different from a classic quest fantasy. There's a magical apprenticeship, prophecies, a quest to fight evil, and travels with a band of companions, but the details make the experience very, very different.

Note that "Who Fears Death" deals frankly with some horrific subjects. Be prepared to face the reality of topics like rape, war, genocide, and female circumcision. It's never gory, gratuitous, or -- amazingly -- particularly depressing (!!), but nothing is glossed over.

The characters were all distinct, real, and interesting. The plot is engaging and logical. While there are real-world political and social issues addressed, the story -- Onyesonwu's story -- is what matters. Best of all (sorry, I'm shallow) there are numerous elements which are just extremely *cool*. Vivid, beautiful, fun, terrifying, and numinous, in turn.

Overall, highly recommended.

Nnedi Okorafor unites the best of Achebe's Things Fall Apart with The Odyssey and The Lord of the Rings in a post-apocalyptic fantasy that sadly just thuds. Her story begins pregnant with possibility and rich with the kind of language and imagery that has long drawn me to post-colonial African literature, and I knew I'd love it. But then it bogs down in extraneous content and never achieves real traction.

Conceived in violence and born in war, Onyesonwu has fought for everything all her life. But she becomes apprenticed to a great wizard and finally finds her place in society. That is, until one rash choice draws the attention of the brutal biological father she has never met. Suddenly Onyesonwu must leave the only life she's ever known to confront her father before his dark wizardry consumes her people.

The first third of this novel really sings. Growing up an outcast in a world that denies its violent heritage, Onyesonwu must uncover her destiny as a stranger. Her evocative descriptions create a lively society built on the mysterious foundations of a dead world. Living on the outside, Onyesonwu sees truths her peers reject, and she describes them in such incisive detail that I believe I could travel to this place.

But then the story shifts to a conventional quest fantasy as Onyesonwu and her friends seek her father. And the quest drags in an episodic fashion. The team has encounters, sometimes proves its mettle, but most often talks interminably. They have soap-operatic personal encounters, and unbelievably long passages occur in which nothing happens to advance the plot. I soldiered on, hoping the story would redeem itself at the end.

No such luck. Important events flash past, and if your mind wanders at key moments, too bad. One principal character dies so suddenly, with so little fanfare, that our narrator has to remind us the death has happened. Even the confrontation with the ultimate evil happens very fleetingly, just one more episode in a string like beads. This book starts so well, and then I found myself praying for the end.

After three acclaimed YA novels in a similar African dreamscape, this is Okorafor's first novel featuring an adult heroine. Perhaps Okorafor is maturing as a writer herself. If so, well done, but she has far to go. Her menacing evil should be less abstract, her quest should be more tightly constructed, and she must hold her characters' feet to the fire. This book never quite fulfills its exquisite promise.

It's difficult to describe this novel, which has elements of fantasy, supernatural, and speculative fiction. It's set in Africa, in an apparently futuristic time after a disaster has occurred which has caused technology to fall by the wayside as magic and sorcery flourish. There is growing conflict as the Nuru people attempt to exterminate the Okeke based on writings in their holy book, "The Great Book." Into this canvas steps Onyesonwu, the heroine, whose name means "Who Fears Death." Onye is the product of a Nuru soldier's rape of her Okeke mother. As a young child, Onye discovers her own magical powers and is drawn into a fascinating world of sorcery, prophecies and a frightening end game to the genocide spearheaded by her biological father. Onye learns that she has a powerful role to play in determining the fate of this world.

I loved this novel and found that everything around me seemed to disappear as I read it. The author is a master at world-building and created so sharp and vivid a picture of this magical world that it felt very real. The characters, too, were clearly brought to life and easy to care about. The storyline went at a good pace, with some suspenseful moments and some tearful ones. While set in a fictional world, the story in many ways mirrors present-day Africa, particularly the genocide in the Sudan. I think this novel would appeal to a varied audience, from those who love African fiction to those who enjoy supernatural/ fantasy tales.

Who Fears Death takes the reader on a journey to post-apocalyptic Africa, and it is no surprise to find that the author was inspired to read this after reading about Sudan. The book touches on pertinent African issues such as slavery, conflict between different races and ethnicities. It also has an African perspective on magic, or "juju" as it is called in the book. The lead characters are in fact powerful sorcerers, but not in the usual sense. It all feels completely new and fresh, particularly to someone who reads more traditional science fiction and fantasy and rarely has read African literature. It often seems timeless, as if it could have taken place in a completely new fantasy world, but then devices from our own world are mentioned - "portables", computers, monitors. In this book, these items are either old technology from the bad old days, or they are new technology, required by the world's new order. For example, most of the world is a desert, so water capture stations are required. Because it was all so different from Western fantasy and sci fi, I didn't know what to expect - particularly from the magic - and it was more interesting. At the same time, it was grounded in real world technology and events, so I didn't feel lost.

The book's main character is the product of rape, a mixed-race woman of both Okeke and Nuru parentage. In this world, the Nuru look somewhat Asian and represent the ruling class. The Okeke are the original inhabitants of the land, dark-skinned, and they are either enslaved or killed by the Nuru. The exception is the peaceful city in the east where the characters grow up. However, the dark events happening in the West - the genocide happening to the Okeke - keeps sending reminders in the form of storytellers and prophets. The main character, Onye, and her friends are driven to return to the East to stop it, however they can. The novel begins with her origin story, proceeds to a coming-of-age, and even has a bit of romance before it turns into straight-up adventure story and quest narrative. I suppose those are all the key parts to a good story, if you think of something comparable like Star Wars.

I loved this book and couldn't stop reading it. Beyond the story and setting itself, which were fascinating, the book was appealing because the chapters were short, and also the whole story stuck with the same main character for the entire time. So it was easy to pick up and put down whenever you got the chance to get a few pages in. That said, if I ever had the chance to read for a longer period, I couldn't put it down. The world was so different and interesting that I am personally hoping this author comes out with more books. She has a great way of describing it so that you can visualize it, but without over-describing. In other words, it is vivid.

Other reviewers mentioned the level of violence. While the book has violence, I do not think it is any worse than other books in this genre. In fact, it is handled quite sensitively. The rape scenes, for example, are not over-described to the point of gratuitousness. No, they get the point across without explicit explanations. Many times, the violent acts are glossed over. Also, I do not think we should steer our eyes away from these stories of militarized rape, children turned into soldiers, slavery, genocide, or even female genital mutilation. These things are happening in our world right now, not just in this novel. Perhaps it is because I do read the news that I didn't find it shocking at all when I found it in the book. Many of the things that happen to people in the book happen in the real Africa. It seemed to me that the author was subtly raising our consciousness level, but without hitting us over the head.

I'd heard good things about this book. But between its poor structure, its infuriating outdated tropes, its overpowered heroine and its all-too-easy magical solutions to real-life problems, I'm left wondering why so many people like it.

Who Fears Death is a post-apocalyptic fantasy novel, set in a future Sudan with many of the problems that plague the region today (genocide, weaponized rape, female genital mutilation, etc.). The narrator, Onyesonwu, is a child of rape, who faces discrimination based on her gender and her mixed-race status while growing up, but goes on in the second half of the novel to undertake a quest to stop the genocide against her mother's people.

So far, so good. I liked the vividly described setting and culture, the heroine's interactions with her friends, the simple, direct prose and the way the book deals with sexism. I didn't like the long passages dealing with the spirit world or explaining how magic works (your mileage may vary; I find that kind of stuff boring). The real problems, however, became more evident the further I got into the book. Some SPOILERS follow.

1) As this book becomes a save-the-world quest novel, the subplots quickly overwhelm the main plot. A large chunk of the second half of the book is spent on inter-group tensions (who's sleeping with whom, etc.) and wacky wayside tribes; only a few pages are spent actually saving the world at the end. It's nice that Okorafor doesn't romanticize the questors, but if you're going to write a book about stopping a genocide, your characters need to spend more than a few pages actually doing that.

2) The book is cluttered with some of the most tired of outdated fantasy tropes: the Chosen One prophesied to save the world, the standard coming-of-age story with a mentor and a quest, the prophecy-driven plot in which characters make decisions based on the prophecy they've heard rather than reason or common sense, etc. Without the African setting, I don't believe anyone would have taken this nonsense seriously.

3) Speaking of unfortunate cliches, one of the nastiest tropes ever to plague young-adult fantasy rears its ugly head here: the heroine, claiming she doesn't believe in killing, refuses to finish the villain when she has him at her mercy (despite the fact that he's initiated a genocide and has every intention of carrying through with it, and has raped and killed countless women).... but she feels no remorse when she kills and/or maims large numbers of random, nameless and relatively blameless characters without speaking parts. Google "What Measure is a Mook" if you haven't encountered this one before. Inexcusable.

4) The heroine is way too powerful. She can do apparently anything: alter time, bring back the dead, etc. (Of course, to avoid leeching the heroic sacrifices of their value, the author comes up with increasingly contrived excuses for her inability to revive important characters.)

5) Last and worst of all: while the author raises plenty of important and timely issues, such as genocide and FGM, she deals with them poorly, having the heroine solve them by magic. The solution to genocide, apparently, is to have the heroine "rewrite" their holy book--which doesn't require any actual writing or thought, but rather the equivalent of waving a wand at it. What's the idea here? That violent and/or racist holy books are the sole cause of genocide? That the only solution to this very real problem is intrepid time-travelers (who don't really even need a plan, just friendship and courage)? It doesn't work. I respect that the author is taking on real-world issues and that she's trying to make a point about how the stories we tell affect the actions we take. But she simplifies it to the point of caricature; the most cursory knowledge of real-world history reveals that the same religions, with the same texts, are in some times and places violent and intolerant, in others accepting and peaceful. In the end, although there's personal sacrifice, the solution here is all too easy and simplistic.

So while I was initially excited to read some non-European, feminist fantasy, I really can't recommend this book. As a YA novel it might be acceptable (although the amount of teen sex, rape and other violence might raise a few eyebrows), but it doesn't work for adults. Its overall positive reception seems to me to speak more to the dearth of African fantasy available in the English-speaking world than anything else.

This is a fantasy novel set in the Sudan-of-the-future. As one might expect given what has been going on there lately, the book is filled with murder, rape, and authorial outrage at people's incredible ability to ignore atrocities that don't affect them directly. We also get incest, female circumcision, and a heroine, Onyesonwu, who's lucky to go five minutes without having some kind of emotional, physical, or magical harm inflicted on her.

It's by no means a bad book. I also can't call it a good one, however. Onyesonwu suffers so much that I refused to try to identify with her, out of sheer self-defense; this lack of any emotional connection to the main character made reading the novel a dry intellectual exercise, and an unpleasant one at that. Most of the supporting characters are irritating bigots, so there was no help to be had there.

On the other hand, I did know what I was getting into after reading Amazon's blurb, the magic is interesting, and the plot is a straightforward fantasy staple (adventurers go on a quest to save the world). It's entirely possible that a lot of folks will like this much better than I did. But I won't be personally recommending it to anybody.

"To be something abnormal meant that you were to serve the normal. And if you refused, they hated you...and often the normal hated you even when you did serve them."

In Nnedi Okorafor's post-apocalyptic, near-future Sudan, there are two predominant ethnic factions: the light-skinned Nuru and the dark-skinned Okeke. Who Fears Death takes place amid a genocide that the Nuru commit against the Okeke, a campaign that (like genocides in our own time) includes both murder and rape. The mixed-race offspring of a Nuru and an Okeke is called an Ewu and treated as an outcast.

Onyesonwu, whose name means "Who fears death?", is Ewu, the result of her mother's rape. As a child she develops magical powers, which further set her apart from others. In her girlhood she clashes with the local sorcerer, who doesn't want to teach her because she is Ewu and a girl. Later, as a young woman, she gathers a small group of friends and travels eastward to confront her biological father, who is himself a powerful sorcerer and the mastermind behind the genocide.

Who Fears Death can be incredibly hard to read, due to the subject matter. Okorafor depicts racial and sexual violence without flinching, and because the scenario echoes real events taking place in our own time, it hits hard. It hurts more than reading about imaginary violence in a made-up land.

Okorafor doesn't pretty up the violence, nor does she glorify it. Scenes of violence are written in a matter-of-fact way. The writing style becomes more lyrical when describing the beautiful. One is left with the impression that Okorafor is glorifying exactly the right parts of the story. Love, kindness, magic: these things are worth celebrating. Violence just *is*, in Onyesonwu's world and our own.

The setting may sound like one of today's (or tomorrow's) news headlines. Onyesonwu's plot arc, though, will be familiar in other ways. Okorafor shows that a hero(ine)'s journey can fit into this bleak setting just as well as it can fit into a fairy-tale kingdom, weaving several classic fantasy tropes (such as magical training and the complex bond between mentor and student, and the ragtag band of friends who venture forth to battle evil) into the story. Onyesonwu calls to mind a really big archetype, too, one of the most famous ones: the savior-figure who brings hope to an oppressed people.

Yet she is no plaster saint. Onyesonwu is stubborn and has a temper. She feels lust and love and jealousy. She even has neuroses; she doesn't like different foods touching on her plate. Her lover Mwita is equally fleshed-out. Her friends are drawn in broader strokes, but you'll come to love them too, and it hurts that not all of them make it. The rest of the cast members are just as memorable. I think my favorites are Najeeba (Onyesonwu's mother) and Luyu (one of the band of friends).

Who Fears Death is a book I will never forget, though I'm not sure I'll reread it; some of the scenes are ones I don't want to revisit. Several early scenes -- a gang rape and a female circumcision -- nearly made me abandon the book because they were painful to read. I'm glad I persisted, though; before long I was swept up in Onyesonwu's story and couldn't put the book down. The night I finished, I stayed up far too late turning pages, and after closing the book, I couldn't sleep. Okorafor includes some tantalizing ambiguities, and I lay awake turning these ambiguities over and over in my mind. I love a book that makes me tear up and makes me think at the same time.

Nnedi Okorafor's novel "Who Fears Death" (2010) is a mixture of fantasy, parable, and realism set in the Sudanese desert at some indeterminate time in the future. The author is an American born to immigrant Nigerian parents. She is a professor of creative writing at Chicago State University. Although she has written earlier books for young adults, "Who Fears Death" is Okorafor's first novel.

The book is challenging, imaginative, and disturbing. I found it difficult to get a handle on where and when the story was taking place and on its character. This ambiguity may be a strength of the novel as the reader becomes drawn into the story before skepticism can take hold. Many of the characters of this book are sorcerers. They have power to change themselves into animals, cast spells, kill people and animals or restore them to life, forsee the future, among other things. In my reading, I began with the assumption that the sorcerors claimed such powers but of course did not possess them. I also thought these alleged powers would be set in the past or in a tribal community. Okorafor, however, writes her tale without expressing any doubt about the reality of these mystical powers. And the setting of the book, in which computers, laptops, and similar modern devices are shown as relics of a long past time give the book a futurist character.

The novel seems to me a parable of African history but it is much more. The author has invented the strange world of her tale and its characteristics. The main character, and narrator, is a 20 year old woman, Onyesonwu (Onye), whose name translates into the title of the book. The story centers around the antagonism of two African tribes called the Okeke and the Naru. They share a common scripture called the Great Book and worship a goddess called Ani. The Great Book taught that the Okeke were destined for all time to be the slaves of the Naru. As the novel opens the Okeke have been rebelling against their fate and the Naru have been committing barbarous acts of genocide against them. These acts include brutal rapes. Onye is the product of the extended rape of an Okeke woman by a Naru man whose identity is initially undisclosed but who comes to play an important further villanous role in the story. Children born of a union between the Naru and the Okeke, whether or not the union was consensual, are ostracized by both sides and called Ewu.

It is almost immediately apparent that Onye has rare magical powers. During the first six years of Onye's life, described in the book's opening section, she wanders the desert alone with her mother as an outcast. Then, mother and daughter move to a small town where they live precariously as Onye's mother marries a successful local blacksmith. At age 11, Onye undergoes a harrowing rite of female circumcision. She wants to receive training in the mysteries of sorcery but the local sorceror rebuffs her several times, in part because of Onye's gender, before reluctantly agreeing to teach her. Onye passes an extraordinary initiation ritual in which she forsees and goes through in advance her own death. She is in love with a young man, Mwita, who also aspired to become a sorceror but failed the initiation rite. Mwitwa has extraordinary gifts as a healer even though he has failed as a sorceror. Mwita is also an Ewu, the offspring of a consensual, loving marriage between an Okeke and a Naru. He loves Onye although he envies her success. His envy is attibuted in part to gender bias. Thus, the second part of the novel describes Onye's life in the little town, her developing relationship with Mwita, and her training as a sorceror.

In the third and longest part of the novel, the book takes another strange turn as Onye, Mwita, and four other persons described earlier in the book leave the town to try to stop the impending destruction of the Okeke people and to allow Onye to fulfill her destiny by rewriting the Great Book to end the cruelties it allows. The theme of meeting, accepting, and fulfilling one's destiny gives the book a Nietzschean cast. Onye, despite her magical powers, is a religious skeptic who does not believe in the goddess Ani or in any other divinity. The book becomes something of a wandering, picaresque novel,as Onye and her entourage travel through the desert for over five months. They endure great hardship, fight among themselves, and meet many people and their villages and have odd adventures along the way. Despite her powers, Onye can be impulsive, quarrelsome, and unpleasant. Her character deepens during the desert journey, as do her powers as a sorceror and her love for Mwita. Ultimately, she must confront her destiny of rewriting the Great Book and coming to terms with her evil but powerful biological father.

The book is written in mostly short chapters and for all its obscurity and magic is on the whole easy to follow. The scenes of desert wandering are impressive. The elements of fantasy and of sorcery will not be to every reader's liking or sympathy. There are many gruesome, violent scenes in the book. The peculiar exoticism of the book, the invented world, the futurism, the imaginative writing, and the ersatz Nietzschean tone ultimately made it succeed, albeit precariously, for me. But the novel is overly ambitious and broad in its scope as Okorafor apparently feels she must identify,address and resolve virtually every issue which she believes plagues the world. The book tries too many things. It is a coming-of-age story for Onye, a picaresque novel,a story of Africa, and a parable against religious bigotry, racism, tribalism, gender discrimination, female mutilation, war, child soldiering, and more. It tends to collapse under its own weight. In writing novels, much is to be gained by restricting one's scope. Less can often be more.

Robin Friedman

Plot Summary: This dark fantasy is set against a genocide between two peoples in Africa. Twenty years ago, a woman was brutally raped, she escaped into the desert and gave birth to a girl she named Onyesonwu, which means Who Fears Death? As Onye grows up, she learns that she is considered an Ewu, an outcast, because of her mixed-blood heritage and because she was a child of rape. Onye's troubles go much deeper when it becomes apparent that she's also a sorceress, and her fate is to turn the tide of violence that wracks her nation.

I wanted to read this book, but I was also afraid of it. Who Fears Death touches on so many hard-core issues - rape, genocide, and female circumcision - that I was leery of it until I dived in. Nnedi Okorafor doesn't shy away from the brutality in these difficult scenes, but she doesn't sensationalize it either. I read it all without sheding a tear, and on the one hand, I appreciate not being wrung dry like a wet towel, but on the side, I wish I had had a deeper connection to Onyesonwu. I felt distanced from her story, and while I didn't feel the pain, I also couldn't revel in the sweet moments, like her romance with Mwita. I suppose that's my only criticism, because otherwise the story was amazing.

The story is told in Onye's voice, and the short, simple sentences ring true. Part of me wanted more descriptive passages, so I could envision the countryside better, but that's not Onye's way. She's direct, she's honest, and sometimes she's so full of anger she wants to burst. All I can say is, it's not good to anger a powerful, but untrained sorceress. Onye has so many marks against her, being a woman, being Ewu, and having magical powers. Women don't have nearly the same status as men, and her sand-colored skin and hair mark her as a violent abomination. Onye literally can't show her face in some villages for fear of being stoned to death.

Speaking of being stoned to death... the primitive brutality originally made me think this story was set further back in time. People are being stoned, beaten, hacked with machetes, and it's all happening in the here and now. Each time someone rode a scooter, or used a cell phone, it was jarring to me. There's a scene where they come upon a cave full of discarded computer equipment, and it evokes an erie feeling. Technology is the product of civilization, but it coexists side-by-side with this unthinking brutality that harkens back to caveman violence. The hate that drives the genocide is mindless, pointless, and pitiless.

Okay, now I think I've focused on the violence too much, because that's only a small part of Who Fears Death. The heart of the story is about Onye's coming of age, learning about her powers, and trying to convince the stubborn, old, chauvinist sorcerer in her village to mentor her. It's a remarkable tale.

I've been a fan of Nnedi Okorafor's for awhile now; I love her seminal children's fantasy Zahrah the Windseeker. This novel, however, is adult and science fantasy. Set in a future of unknown distance after an ecological apocalypse -- most of the world has become a desert; people use handmade computers and portable water-condensers to survive -- the story takes place in an unnamed land beset by conflict. The Nuru, following the dictates of "the Great Book", have taken it upon themselves to destroy the Okeke -- a culture whose people they already enslave and oppress. As part of this genocidal campaign, they systematically rape Okeke women, deliberately trying to create mixed-race babies.

Sound familiar? [...] It isn't clear until the end of the story which nation this is -- could've been one of any number from Rwanda to the former Yugoslavia, since the pattern of rape as a weapon of war is by no means exclusive to any one locale. That said, it's pretty clear that this is set in some nation in Africa, and the parallels with [...]. Especially as the novel's protagonist Onyesunwo -- a child of rape -- grows up. Although she lives far from the conflict, her mother having fled to the more peaceful eastern region after the attack, Onyesunwo lives under the war's shadow constantly, not the least because the is a living warning to the Okeke of the horrors to come. They treat her badly as a result -- though she still makes friends, and finds allies, despite both prejudice and sexism. As Onyesunwo learns the history behind this war, she discovers that she is the focus of a prophecy that may end it. That is, of course, assuming she can survive the attempts of a powerful sorcerer -- her own evil biological father -- to kill her, and prevent the prophecy from coming true.

There's a lot of grim, painful stuff in this book: it starts with an horrific gang rape scene (be forewarned), then progresses through violence, torture, prejudice, bullying, female genital cutting, colorism, child soldiering, and more. Yet these are all treated in a nuanced fashion that I've rarely seen in fiction or even nonfiction -- there's far more to this story than just "war is bad". Onyesunwo finds love, and sets forth with her friends to face her father and her fate. There's a lot of wonder and laughter on this journey. Some elements of truly mythic beauty, too: the magical house of the elders, for example; and I found myself utterly fascinated by the chapters in which the gang encounters the Red People, a group of free-love nomads who travel amid <em>their own personal sandstorm.</em> The magic system is complex and fascinating; I kinda want to put together an RPG campaign based on it. And not only is Onyesunwo herself a kickass character -- I'd pit her against any dozen urban fantasy "chick with a tattoo and a gun" protagonists -- but her whole crew of girlfriends (and Mwita, her boyfriend/lover) are pretty hardcore too.

This is a horrifying, inspiring, painful, joyous book. Buy it.