Rating: 3/5, average
Who Fears Death is a science fantasy novel by Nnedi Okorafor, PhD, a Nigerian-American writer and creative writing instructor. Who Fears Death has been optioned for an HBO show directed by George R.R. Martin. I’ve been hearing a lot of hype about this book. I’ve been following Nnedi Okorafor on Twitter since she wrote that piece about the Lovecraft statue, so I was excited when our science fiction book club picked this as the next book to read.
Who Fears Death starts out strong. Onyesonwu, whose name means “Who Fears Death”, is Ewu, a child born from the rape of an Okeke woman by a Nuru soldier. Okeke have darker colored skin and seem African, Nuru have lighter-colored skin and seem Middle Eastern. Ewu, a mix of Nuru and Okeke, stand out because of their light skin and freckles, and their mixed race makes them outcast in both Nuru and Okeke communities.
Onyesonwu’s Ewu heritage gives her magical powers, and most of the book is about Onyesonwu traveling to different towns and honing her exceptional magical powers.
Because Ewu are usually born from violence, there is a cultural expectation that they will be violent when they grow up. Mwita, a young Ewu man who Onyesonwu falls in love with, urges Onyesonwu not to give in to her violent tendencies, but most of the problems in the book are solved by Onyesonwu using violence. For example, the teacher of magic in her hometown refuses to tutor her because she’s a girl, and the way she gets him to change his mind is by beating him up and forcing him to recognize her magical prowess.
The main drive of the book is for Onyesonwu to find her rapist father and kill him. On her way to do so, she does two things which make her almost as bad as the Nuru men she’s fighting against. I’m trying not to give away too much, but it’s so bad even her other teacher, Sola, calls her his “student-gone-wrong” in the epilogue.
Who Fears Death has a lot of visual, memorable scenes and excellent commentary on racial tensions and human apathy, but ultimately it shoots itself in the foot with its ending. Onyesonwu’s extraordinary power and her lack of control over that power prove all the stereotypes about Ewu right, which is extremely disappointing.
I’m interested to see what they do in the show. If they might change the ending to make more sense and not contradict the themes built up in the first three-quarters of the book, it could be great. As it is, I think it’s worth reading as there’s not a lot of African fantasy out there and it’s neat to read something new in fantasy.
It does meander a lot, but maybe that’s just a thing that happens with novels set in the desert. It reminded me a lot of Wraeththu, with the magic and the wandering through different towns and the way Onyesonwu’s body has to get destroyed and rebuilt to become stronger. The pit stops usually don’t bother me, as long as they’re interesting, but there were a lot of parts of Who Fears Death that I kind of had to force myself to keep reading through because I really wanted to find out what would happen in the end. And then the ending did not have a good resolution or even make sense on a practical or even magical level… *sigh*
Still, there were a lot of things I really enjoyed. I felt that a lot of it had good emotional truth and resonated in my heart (if that doesn’t sound too woo-woo). I liked Onyesonwu at first, but my opinion of her declined over the course of the book. She reminded me of Oreo, but angrier and not as bright. I loved Luyu, Onyesonwu’s friend. Everything she does is motivated by her desire to be free, and I can really get behind that. I also liked Onyesonwu’s other two friends and FGM-buddies (did I mention there’s a female genital mutilation scene in here?) Diti and Binta. They seemed very realistic and well-fleshed-out, and as someone else at the scifi meeting mentioned, women who like scifi can get a little starved for well-rounded female characters.
I can’t comment much on the FGM scene, but I thought her portrayal was pretty well-balanced between tradition and feminism. In Onyesonwu’s town, female genital mutilation is an ancient practice that not many women do anymore, so her choice to go through with it comes as a shock to her parents. Onyesonwu ends up deciding it was a mistake and reversing it with magic, but it’s interesting to see how she re-appropriates ancient tradition as teenage rebellion.
The thing I liked the most about Who Fears Death is the way it immerses the reader in a cultural and physical landscape that feels so far away from American life, and that’s why I still give it three stars despite the crash-and-burn ending.
Favorite Quotes
“I was sick of these [racist] sentiments coming out of even the people that I loved. All it took was getting them angry. This is what made my mother and Mwita different from everyone else, even Aro. In their deepest rage, no such insults ever came from their lips. Never.”
“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.”
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