Monday, June 3, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: David Mogo, Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on July 9 2019 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way (if I'd hated the book, I just would not have reviewed it). 


David Mogo, Godhunter is the fantasy novel debut of Nigerian author Suyi Davies Okungbowa.  Described by the author as "godpunk," the story takes place in a future (although seemingly a pretty near-future) Nigerian in which African Gods have descended onto Nigeria - and especially Lagos, and caused a massive disruption in life.  The story is told in three parts; it's essentially three novellas that occur one after the other, with small time gaps in between.

The end result is....well, it's fine, but unremarkable honestly.  Each of the three parts works okay as a whole, with solid plots and a solid main character, but there really aren't any developed characters other than said main character.  In particular, there basically aren't any women characters of note until the final part of the book.  There's certainly promise in this book's setting, but so many characters and gods are kind of interchangeable and so while the book never comes close to being bad, it never manages to stand out in any way, which is a shame.


---------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Over a decade ago, "The Falling" occurred in Nigeria - in which African gods of various pantheons fell to Earth, and those gods, godlings, etc. began to make new homes on Earth - sometimes with little regards for who exactly was in their way.  In Lagos, those with money reacted by using it to secure their homes on the Upper Island, while everyone else tried desperately to survive amidst the chaos caused by the now present Gods, Wizards, and everything in between.

David Mogo is a demigod, found one day by a local wizard in Lagos and taken-in.  He knows nothing about his godly mother - who she is, or even what pantheon she is - except for the occasional cryptic dreams he has of her.  David makes his living as a "godhunter", using his skills and some enchanted weapons to stop godlings from causing problems in the neighborhood.  It's not a glamorous life, but someone has to do it.

But when a powerful wizard, with great ambitions, asks David to hunt and capture not just godlings, but a pair of actual High Gods, he finds himself in more trouble than he could've bargained for - and with the fate of the whole city of Lagos, if not the country, in his hands.  And as events continue to get more complicated - forcing David to come to grips with who he is as a demigod and what he can do - David will find that he has more to lose than he ever thought possible....and that his dangerous enemies and their divine powers threaten to cause him that loss.....
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As I mentioned above, David Mogo, Godhunter is split into three parts, Godhunter, Firebringer, and Warmonger, with each part being essentially its own complete story (part 2, Firebringer, does have a significant cliffhanger at the end, but it comes after its story is complete really).  Each subsequent part expands the magical/godly nature of the conflict in the story, with the first part starting with a god-possessed villain and the third concluding with an all out massive conflict of gods on all sides.

Through it all, our story focuses on its eponymous hero, David Mogo, the demigod godhunter.  David's a pretty solid if unexceptional hero as a man (well half) whose central goal is helping those he cares about - and can occasionally get led astray by those wishes.  He's a man who rests his emotions on his sleeve, and his reactions to loss, anger, and betrayal are very real, if not necessarily the best possible for his own sake.  Still, while he's easy to root for as a result, he has - and so do others to be fair - moments of stupidity that are kind of annoying to read, which especially show up in the book's second part and seem there only to prolong the story.

Alas, David is basically the only interesting character developed in the story.  The book spends only rare moments developing the backgrounds or personalities of the other characters in the story, to the point where they often feel like blank slates - for example - our most prominent woman character is a mute teenager whose first big act is to simply exist in the right place at the right time.  There are fragments of interesting potential characters here - the grizzled exiled wizard estranged from his god, the war goddess who seeks no longer to fight wars, the commander of the special forces who has to try and lead ordinary people to fight in the midst of gods - but the book just doesn't devote any time to them, to the point where significant developments in their relationships occur off screen.  Hell even the antagonists don't get enough page-time, appearing mainly for their major plot moments and that's it - the main antagonist gets an interesting backstory/worldview finally in the final part...only for it to turn to nothing.  And that final part introduces a number of new antagonist goddesses who get no development at all, and if I didn't have some knowledge of who a few of those goddesses were from other stories, I would've been really lost.

It's kind of a problem in a book where a big theme is the David's realization that he has come to find himself with a growing family of people he cares about, since David's relationships with those characters happen near entirely off screen.  David spends a substantial time in parts 1 and 2, and even a little in part 3, on his own, and while these parts are written well, with the plot unfolding at a nice pace and in interesting ways (plot-induced stupidity in part 2 mentioned above aside), the result is that I basically never cared about the other characters David cared about.

Again, David Mogo, Godhunter has an interesting setting and the plot is never boring, so I don't want to suggest this book is bad.  But the book doesn't reach a level above "fine" due to its lack of any other interesting characters other than its title protagonist.  Ah well.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)