Tuesday, November 9, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Noor by Nnedi Okorafor

 



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 November 9, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Noor is the latest novel by Africanfuturist author Nnedi Okorafor, well known for her novel Who Fears Death, her Binti series of novellas, or her YA/middle-grade Akata Witch series, among many many other books.  Okorafor's works have run the gamut in terms of tones and themes, although a few themes - the exploitation of Africa by the West and by capitalism both in the past and the potential future - do tend to come up repeatedly - for good reason.  

Noor is another book dealing with those themes, centering upon a woman in Africa who grew up with deformed limbs and replaced them with cybernetics, and a Fulani Herdsman, both of whom find themselves on the run after others attack them and they defend themselves.  The bulk of the story features them facing off against an exploitative corporation, as they try to find safety around an area of Africa* seeming rendered uninhabitable by crazy winds and sandstorms.  The result is a really strong anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist story that feels similar to some other prior works of Okorafor (The Book of Phoenix, Remote Control), but is also unique in its own way - and definitely powerful.  

*This book takes place in West Africa, at least a good part in Nigeria, but it does seemingly cross what are current borders of the area, so I'm not going to try and parse which country certain events take place in and will just refer to the area of the setting as Africa or West Africa.  
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AO is proud of who she is - a woman who replaced/augmented her deformed/injured limbs with cybernetic ones, and appears as much artificial as human - to the extreme dislike of the prejudiced and religious.  The cybernetics let her live a normal life, and the only cost to her is some headaches and bearable minor symptoms.  But after her fiance left her, she finds herself attacked at a market she thought was safe...and in the process of defending herself, she kills several men and is forced to go on the run.  There she meets a Fulani Herdsman named DNA, fleeing the massacre of his people by farmers with his only two remaining steer.  

Soon, AO and DNA find themselves on the run not just from prejudiced farmers and marketpeople, but from the corporation that runs the power stations - the Noors - and business enterprises all throughout Africa - Ultimate Corp.  Their only chance of escape may be to head into the sandstorm known as the Red Eye, home to people who live with the aid of technology off the grid....but even that may not be far enough to escape Ultimate Corp., which wants them to take advantage of powers AO never knew she possessed.  
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Noor is a story of a future Africa that looks very familiar in some ways to the one we know - you have Felani Herdsmen and Farmers who fight each other over land and rights, you have people who are religious who sometimes act against technology, and you have a major western corporation that tries to exploit the resources of the land, all the while providing services and goods to the native Africans such that they can get away with it.  On the other hand, it's also an Africa with technology that can shield from sandstorms, where an African genius created an energy transmitting device that transmits power to the rest of the world, pursuant to a deal where some of it is still kept in the continent for the native people, and things like cybernetic arms and AI are very real.  

In this world you have AO, a woman whose choices to have cybernetic limbs were never approved by anyone close to her - like her family, or fiance - but who thinks herself as better because of them.  But AO's understanding of the world, and her own choices, is shown by the story to be incomplete, and she soon realizes that much of her choices, and her ostracization, was helped along by the corporation Ultimate Corp.  And that understanding is also shifted her meeting with DNA, who feels a connection to the land and just wants to live a traditional lifestyle as a herdsman, with whom she falls in love in a relationship that works really well.  And DNA himself is another strong and really great character, caring for his old fashioned way of life even in the face of oa family that thinks it knows what's best for him - even as they love him.  

These characters help build a story i don't want to spoil, but one with strong anticapitalist and anti-colonial themes.  How can you defeat an enemy that provides so many goods and services to your own people, such that they won't care if they're exposed as evil?  One that's willing to play on prejudice and bribery to turn people against one another?   The story tries to deal with these questions, all the while showing the ingenuity and power of individuals on the ground who are working together, most notably the people who live in the middle of the Red Eye, to survive in the middle of what should be the most uninhabitable of places.  The contrast between the people living in the Red Eye and the works of the Ultimate Corp works incredibly well here to build on these themes....with it, and the characters leading up to an ending that is just incredibly powerful and incredibly surprising, exposing the lies of capitalism and colonialism once and for all.  

This book resembles The Book of Phoenix in its take on exploitation - of both individuals like AO (and Phoenix in that book) and of peoples in general, and like that book it ends in a moment of righteous fury...except this time it isn't one that is as destructive towards everyone, but instead promises a potentially better future for the exploited after all is said and done. 

This is honestly a lousy review, I know, but this is a book that is very much best experienced without spoiling.  Recommended. 

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