Monday, June 18, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor



Akata Witch is the first in a YA/Middle-Grade series from Nnedi Okorafor, whose sequel is up for this year's (Not-A-)Hugo Award for Best Young Adult Novel.  A Nigerian inspired Young Adult novel (Amazon lists it as being for readers from grades 7 to 9, which seems about right), Akata Witch follows the Albino Nigerian-American girl Sunny, whose family moved back to Nigeria, and discovers that she is one of the Leopard People, who are able to use magic and juju.  The story follows Sunny and her three friends as she discovers the magical world of Leopard People and is forced to face a great evil.

The above may sound generic middle grade fantasy, and well, it is!  But Okorafor writes the story extremely well for what it is, with a bunch of surprises along the way, and well, most of the time this type of story (see Harry Potter) is done from a White perspective, and the difference is definitely interesting to read.

More After the Jump:

--------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------
Sunny Nwazue was born in America to Nigerian parents, who took her and her family back to Nigeria when she was nine.  As an Albino, Sunny has always stood out among her schoolmates peers, and as an American she has often been looked down upon, sometimes called by the slur "akata" (used to refer to foreign-born Blacks and meaning "Bush Animal").

But one day Sunny looks into a candle and sees horrible devastation in the flame and things quickly change when she is befriended by a classmate named Orlu and his friend Chichi.  She soon learns that both Orlu and Chichi, as well as another American named Sasha, are "Leopard People" who have the ability to use magic known as juju.  Chichi, Orlu and Sasha inherited their powers from their parents, but Sunny is a "Free Agent" and has nowhere to learn from but her teachers and friends.  Fortunately, Leopard People currency is awarded with finding knowledge, and Sunny has plenty to learn and discover.

But as Sunny and her three friends learn and discover, they find out that Sunny's vision in the Candle Flame may come true as a dark force is conducting dark juju to summon an ancient evil into the world....and that the four of them, as an Oha Coven, may be the last hope of stopping it.
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Akata Witch is told entirely from Sunny's perspective and benefits from Sunny being a very relate-able and understandable main character.  The girl who discovers she has magic powers and a destiny to defeat a great evil along with her friends is a pretty standard character-type in the genre (the Amazon blurb for the book makes a Harry Potter comparison, and in this sense, the comparison is fair) but Sunny is an extremely well done version of that character.  She's sweet and well meaning, but still a 12 year old girl with typical such emotions, who is interested in learning about magic but still insecure about it, who wants to do good but isn't particularly driven to be a hero, who probably most wants friendship and love.  It's a really sweet take on the archetype.

The rest of Sunny's friends are nice additions as well.  Orlu is the most boring of the group, but he's fine and shows signs of being a solid future love interest, but the more rebellious know-it-alls Sasha and Chichi are really cute.  And the teachers and world of Leopard People are nice and interesting as well, different from the usual setting in these stories.

One of the cuter ideas of the book, I'd add, is that knowledge is literal currency among Leopard People - as they learn things, magical currency appears out of thin air for them to collect.  It's a fun idea that is contrasted by a few Leopard People being greedy and bad examples for their caring about other things.  These ideas are followed up on by a plot that while following the standard playbook of these stories, still contains enough surprises to keep you interested.

(Another cute touch that early chapters all end with a passage from a book that Sunny acquires in story (Fast Facts for Free Agents), providing background info in a way that feels unobtrusive.)

That said, while the book's spin on this common type of book is both extremely well executed and done in a somewhat unique way, it never really breaks out of the ordinary into the extraordinary.  There's a lot of good stuff here, but it's still a book that's clearly meant for its designated age group and will less interest those of older ages (this is not a problem, just a note since some YA works are more appreciable for older readers).  Still I look forward to reading the sequel later this month to see how that book follows up on this one's skeleton.  I would not be surprised if that book takes a leap.
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