Name: Who Fears Death
Rating: 3.928571428571428 (42 reviews)
ISBN: 9780756406172

Nnedi Okorafor

Born into post-apocalyptic Africa to a mother who was raped after the slaughter of her entire tribe, Onyesonwu is tutored by a shaman and discovers that her magical destiny is to end the genocide of her people.

Who Fears Death

Sophia 

Though the genocide was happening mere miles away, these people were far removed. The most they saw was that there were significantly fewer Okeke.

Now optioned as a TV series for HBO, with executive producer George R. R. Martin! An award-winning literary author enters the world of magical realism with her World Fantasy Award-winning novel of a remarkable woman in post-apocalyptic Africa. In a post-apocalyptic Africa, the world has changed in many ways; yet in one region genocide between tribes still bloodies the land. A woman who has survived the annihilation of her village and a terrible rape by an enemy general wanders into the desert, hoping to die. Instead, she gives birth to an angry baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand. Gripped by the certainty that her daughter is different—special—she names her Onyesonwu, which means "Who fears death?" in an ancient language. It doesn't take long for Onye to understand that she is physically and socially marked by the circumstances of her conception. She is Ewu—a child of rape who is expected to live a life of violence, a half-breed rejected by her community. But Onye is not the average Ewu. Even as a child, she manifests the beginnings of a remarkable and unique magic. As she grows, so do her abilities, and during an inadvertent visit to the spirit realm, she learns something terrifying: someone powerful is trying to kill her. Desperate to elude her would-be murderer and to understand her own nature, she embarks on a journey in which she grapples with nature, tradition, history, true love, and the spiritual mysteries of her culture, and ultimately learns why she was given the name she bears: Who Fears Death.

Prashanth Srivatsa

A savage and brutal work of African literature. Imagery that cannot be unseen, and a world imagined in a terrifying future that mirrors our present in uncanny ways.

Janice Hopper

This book was dark & hard to read. But it was ultimately worth the effort, I think.

Natalie

This is one the best books I've read so far this year and it's completely unlike anything I've ever read before. It's just amazing and incredible and words just fail me, they really do.

The world needs more post-apocalyptic African SF. 

A more coherent review will be in the June issue of Romantic Times.

Maggie Gordon

Two stars for an award winning novel? How can that be! Well, I should start by saying I am not a fan of quest stories, prophecy stories, or romance stories. Who Fears Death has all three. I had hoped that the African mythologies and science fantasy combination would help me look past my genre bias, but alas, the book failed to live up to the hopes I had for it.

So, other than my distaste for certain fantasy tropes, what was wrong with Who Fears Death? The book has a severe issue with pacing. The plot structure is nothing particularly new. A destined child is born, has a hard childhood, ends up training with a learned magic person, gets pushed from home too early to fight the big bad, goes on a journey to fight the big bad, and then finally gets to fight the big bad. In Who Fears Death, Onyesonwu is a child born from rape. The big bad, a sorcerer of the Nuru people, believed that her mother,a woman from the enslaved and oppressed Okeke people, would give him a powerful son. Mom flees from her broken community after her rape and raises her daughter in the desert. They eventually settle in a town where Onye has to deal with severe racism because of her biracial nature. Strange things start to happen to her as she grows up, and she seeks training from the local sorcerer. But he refuses because she's a woman, until he doesn't. She meets another Ewu (biracial) boy and they fall in love. Eventually they set off with some friends to kill Onye's father as he wants to commit genocide against the Okeke people. 

I didn't mind the first part of the book dealing with Onye's childhood and teenage years. There is some interesting magic and social interactions. I found that the relationship between her and Mwita was underdeveloped, but I am used to that in YA narratives (this is not a YA book, but it certainly reads like one in many respects). Things began to fall apart once Onye leaves home. Like the infamous Harry Potter forest adventure, Onye's time travellng felt overextended and largely pointless. She did learn things, but most of the time was spent bickering with her friends about sex and relationships. Not exactly what I expected or wanted in a book about genocide and rape. I appreciate that the characters are young, but they all felt spoiled, naive, and oddly unresponsive to the horrors of the world around them. This may partially be a cause of the fact that the story was told in a very "let me tell you what people are thinking", rather than showing the nuanced issues at play, but it certainly made me frustrated with the people I was reading about. 

The ending was a true disaster. The entire book was centered on Onye needing to kill her father, but when she and Mwita get to him, it is Mwita that incapacitates Diab. We spent the entire book talking about how important Onye is and even though she's a woman, she can be the saviour, but it is her male lover than challenges the big bad. In grief and anger over her partner's death (as Mwita is killed after he magics Diab into disability or something), she impregnates herself, and therefore somehow impregnates every woman in the city while killing all the men. Then she and her remaining friend (the rest have either died or left) flee to change the religious book that calls for the genocide of the Okeke. They find it and Onye touches it and everything is magically better. Or not. I'm not sure, I was pretty cranky by this point and having a hard time parsing through the time shift narratives because of the whole "woman is so emotional and wants babies that she causes mass destruction". 

I could spend a long time unpacking all of the issues I had with the construction and the politics of the book. Sure, I may be misreading some things because of cultural differences, but that doesn't make up for the fact that the story just wasn't very good, the characters were underdeveloped, and magic was a deus ex machina for anything wrong.

Flavia Louise

Luke Kanies

I loved this book. It wasn't necessarily the best written, and it definitely had flaws, but it was raw, fun, thoughtful, had good characters, and had the right balance of character, magic, lessons on racism and sexism, and plenty more. Almost like someone's first album, before they got a great producer; this might have been a "better" book with a better editor, but I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it more.

An award-winning literary author enters the world of magical realism with her World Fantasy Award-winning novel of a remarkable woman in post-apocalyptic Africa. Now optioned as a TV series for HBO, with executive producer George R.R. Martin!

Pia Sophia

Breathtaking. I want to give this book a hundred stars. This story leaves me with an aching heart and a hopeful soul tonight.

Bryan Alexander

Who Fears Death is a powerful fantasy novel, one well suited to our time's concerns.

It takes place in a future east Africa, after some unspecified disaster. The plot concerns the life of Onyesonwu, a sorceress born of rape in a race war. It's a bildungsroman as well as a tale of revenge, seen through lenses of race and gender.

The gender aspect loomed largest for me, partly because I'm reading at a point in American culture (June 2016) very concerned with sexism and gender identity. The world of Who Fears Death is structured deeply by sexism, generally, from the widespread practice of rape in war to some of the communities' strict gender roles. The novel's antagonist and villain not only rapes but records the event, saving it for decades of review. There is female genital mutilation, imposed to control girls' sexuality (76). Men have the power to "take what [they] want" from women (158). The holy book anchoring the local culture authorizes unequal roles (244).

There is criticism and resistance. "We're tricked into thinking our husbands are gods" snarled one woman (80). "All mean bear stupidity... It it were only so simple for women [to] bear it too." (138) Onyesonwu resists and fights, repeatedly allying with women, opposing men, and ultimately liberating a large group of women (view spoiler)[by gifting them with magic, not to mention babies (hide spoiler)]. Several men take up unusually non-masculine and feminized roles. Onyesonwu's father courts her mother wearing a veil (12) and with humility, in contrast to his very masculine work (blacksmith). Her love interest is really one part therapist ("Mwita had taught me how to calm my emotions", 193) and one part healer, often frustrated at the latter, since he prefers to be a sorcerer (253). Our heroine greets a priestess as "Ada-m" (33) - i.e., Adam, and that priestess does "father" children importantly. Onyesonwu sleeps with another man, reflecting: "I wondered how Mwita felt about this but some things are more important than a man's ego." (217) Another character, Bisi, fights for women, ensuring they attend school (317). Throughout the book women find strength with each other, especially in bad situations, from mother-daughter bonds to the all-women comforting group which performs the circumcision. 
 
Onyesonwu is a splendid character, frequently enraged. She loves cacti, an apt symbol for her nature. She begins as a sympathetic point of view character, one set up for a revenge plot, then grows into something more. (view spoiler)[She's a chosen one, a redeemer and revenger, who becomes a mythic force to redress evil. Naturally the prophecy is originally for a man. (161) (hide spoiler)]

I'm still thinking about the world of Who Fears Death. Some of it clearly draws on our world, as there's a language called "Ssufi" (i.e., attached to the Sufi branch of Islam), or when the finale reveals the story's locale to be (view spoiler)[today's Sudan (381) (hide spoiler)]. Computers appear as historical relics, sometimes used, otherwise viewed with abhorrence (329). I was moved by the idea that soil could be an alien "substance", indicating not only the desert nature of the world but its isolation and impoverishment (256). The fantasy element shifts around, as when we learn that the domineering Nuru "came from the stars", according to the culture's main book (16). Is that a metaphor, or simple propaganda, or did they descend from astronauts, or...? In one creation story a goddess "reached into the stars and pulled a sun to the land" (92) - is this nuclear war, or an asteroid strike...? I really liked the masquerade-thing. 

Pregnancy and childbirth are powerful here, as you might expect from a semi-traditional society, and one emphasizing patriarchal roles for women. The book describes this is terms of power: women (of one race) can refuse their husband's desire to abort an unwanted fetus (20), and some men fear women's childbirthing capacity (63). At the novel's conclusion (view spoiler)[a whole group of women are magically impregnated, which seems to be a joyous and powerful thing, rather than a burden imposed. (hide spoiler)]

Parts of the narrative frustrated me. The story reaches a powerful, salvific conclusion, then adds several extraneous chapters. A major plot point ((view spoiler)[about Onyesonwu being able to raise the dead! (hide spoiler)]) is awkwardly inserted after its revelation (208). A larger plot point, (view spoiler)[our heroine being the Chosen One(view spoiler)[, I read at first as ironic genre reversal, then tired of it. It's a fantasy trope that I've never liked.

Overall, strongly recommended. An important fantasy book with much to say to our time. (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)]

Who Fears Death

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