It's not a perfect review (mostly positive), but I'm ecstatic to be reviewed by the New York Times. What an honor.Weapons of Mass CreationBy DONNA FREITASPublished in the New York Times, Sunday July 12th
THE SHADOW SPEAKERBy Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu.336 pp. Jump at the Sun/Hyperion. $16.99. (Ages 12 and up)It’s easy to name a dozen fantasy novels set in England but, save for Nancy Farmer’s futuristic book “The Ear, the Eye and the Arm,” difficult to think of one set anywhere in Africa — just one of many unexpected pleasures in Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu’s novel “The Shadow Speaker.”The book’s 14-year-old heroine, Ejii Ugabe, lives in a dystopian Niger, changed not only by nuclear war but by “Peace Bombs” — weapons developed by a militant environmentalist group to “create where the nuclear bombs destroyed.” These sent a “vast green-tinted wave” across all seven continents, ushering the world into the Great Change — a time when magic was unleashed all over the planet, and earthquakes and their aftershocks tore holes in the atmosphere between worlds. Some children are now born “metahuman,” with special gifts. Ejii can speak to shadows, while Dikéogu, the boy who will become her truest friend and companion, can pull rain and lightning from the sky. The two are strong enough to save the world, or destroy it.When she was 9, Ejii witnessed her father’s beheading by the warrior queen Sarauniya Jaa — but far from being traumatized, she was overjoyed; her father had become a tyrant, and she was relieved he was gone. When Ejii learns of Jaa’s belief that she is to become Niger’s next warrior queen, she decides to follow Jaa into another world, embarking on a perilous walkabout in the traditional quest of shadow speakers. “To travel is to court death and greatness,” writes Okorafor-Mbachu, an American whose parents moved to the United States from Nigeria.Despite a story that begins with tragedy and drama, that has a fresh and interesting setting and follows two main characters, a girl and boy, on the cusp of events that will change their lives forever, “The Shadow Speaker” can be difficult to enjoy and even more so to finish. The writing is polished till it gleams, but unfortunately, no amount of good writing can hide the fact that something essential is missing. The story and its characters lack emotional pull; they feel flat on the page. Even when it looks as though Ejii has died — her new powers overwhelm her, and she succumbs to the shadows — it seems like just another event among many.Still, there are creative touches here that fans of fantasy will not want to miss, like the book’s unforgettable scenery. Following Ejii and Dikéogu’s journey through the parched Sahara, they cross into Ginen’s Kingdom of Ooni, where plants grow into houses and where a room might smell like lilacs and have “bright blue spiders, transparent-skinned geckos, lizards with long metallic-looking nails and all sorts of beetles,” even “a tiny red-orange monkey clinging to the ceiling.” And there is magic too in the character of Queen Jaa: when she speaks, “a red flower with glasslike petals” falls from the sky to accompany her prophetic words and war-mongering tactics.This novel — like the author’s first, “Zahrah the Windseeker” (2005) — leaves little doubt that Okorafor-Mbachu’s imagination is stunning and that she can lay the groundwork for a successful fantasy. But ultimately a novel must captivate, wrenching us from our world into its own. On this level, at least, “The Shadow Speaker” falls short.Donna Freitas is an assistant professor of religion at Boston University. Her first novel, “The Possibilities of Sainthood,” will be published in August.
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