(I do.)

Who Fears Death is set in a post-apocalyptic Sudan, where a racial group called the Nuru are set on wiping out a racial group called the Okeke. The protagonist, Onyesonwu (her name means “Who fears death?”), is the daughter of an Okeke woman whose village was all slaughtered and who was raped by a Nuru man; as a mixed-race child — what the Nuru and the Okeke call Ewu — she faces discrimination and hostility from the Okeke. As she grows up under the protection of her mother and her kind, affectionate stepfather, Onyesonwu slowly realizes that she is a sorcerer. Her magical training is difficult to begin and difficult to continue, but she must learn to control her powers in order to realize her destiny.

SO.

Outcast child with a special destiny is one of those tropes you soon have enough of. I have read a dozen outcast with a special destiny books, and I have loved many of them (hem Harry Pottter hem), but there are times when you get tired of reading about the protagonist who is the most special of all the special girls and boys in Special Land. There were two reasons I didn’t feel that way about Who Fears Death:

1. Gender stuff. Y’all know I love my gender stuff. The gendered nature of the magic in this book is unusual and fascinating — Onyesonwu’s power is feared because she is a woman and dire hints are dropped about what might happen if she ever got pregnant while also being a magical person. She struggles to find a teacher because she is a woman, and her determination to be instructed in the use of her powers is one of my favorite things about her as a character. Even better, she’s in a relationship with another Ewu, a boy who failed to become a full sorcerer, and the tension between what he believes about women and magic, and what he knows about her, continues to come up throughout the book.
2. The damage stories can do. Is a theme. One of my favorite themes in all the land is the power of stories theme. Everyone in this novel believes in a story called the Great Book, which tells about how the Okeke became too proud and too powerful, and so the goddess Ani brought forth the race called the Nuru and decreed that the Okeke would be their slaves forever. Oh man. I know it’s not everybody’s thing, but I love having the proposed resolution to any problem in any book be to tell a new and better story than the characters in the book have been using so far.

There were times when the book dragged a little, with the characters wandering drearily through the desert and not accomplishing much. There were times when the worldbuilding could have been more precise, and there were times when Onyesonwu was making decisions I didn’t understand and the author didn’t explain. Although the magic system was interesting and cool and I liked watching Onyesonwu become stronger and learn to do more things, the logic of it in important plot moments didn’t always make sense to me.

Y’all, I feel so silly, but I just realized writing this post that these problems? The above ones? Are the exact same problems basically that I had with Akata Witch, and that book is by the same author. I am forgetful but at least I am consistent by God. My other problem of course was that sexual violence upsets me a lot. It was worth it for this because of the complex and fascinating way Okorafor wove gender and gendered violence into the magic of the story she was telling; which is to say, I’d read more by this author but I might not read this book again.

Have a happy Fourth of July if you celebrate the Fourth of July! I will be back next week to chat with you about the Tudors and the Plantagenets. (I know. You are so excited you can’t hardly stand it. HISTORY.)

The post Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor appeared first on Reading the End.

What Slammerkin is not: Steamy. At all. My coworker who gave it to me said it would be, and I think now she was basing that on the cover, rather than having read it. Which is fine. But I was just expecting it to be more like the sexy parts of Tipping the Velvet, and less like the sleazy street parts of Tipping the Velvet.

What Slammerkin is: A book about the damage inflicted by limitations on women’s choices in ye olden days (the 1700s). The protagonist, Mary, is a clever, independent-minded girl born to poor but honest parents. One part dreams of pretty clothing plus three parts RAPE lead her into a life in prostitution in London at the age of fourteen, which is (with gin) okayish until she has to skip town to save her own skin. Thereupon she goes to live in a small town in Wales, working as a servant and assistant to a seamstress who was once a friend of her mother’s. Though Mary perpetually dreams that her life will be more, there is never any way of putting her ideas into practice. And eventually she (spoilers) kills her mistress and gets hanged. The end.

I did not enjoy Slammerkin but writing this review has talked me into it a little. I’ll tell you why that is.

Mary is a basically ideal historical fiction heroine. She’s clever; she likes to read; she’s witty and smart-mouthed; she’s not intimidated by people and their bullshit; she wants her liberty, and she wants to have nice things. She even has a historically useful marketable skill, as she’s a gifted seamstress and is quick to pick up new embroidery patterns and methods. All this is par for the historical fiction heroines course.

But Mary, unlike many heroines of historical fiction, is not ExceptoGirl. Mary lives in a time where these characteristics are far more likely to get a girl killed than rich. Her desire to get more out of her life serves her ill, ill, ill. She’s raped and thrown out of her house, and because she has no money and can’t make money any other way, she turns to a life of prostitution. Maybe she could make her living as a seamstress, but we’ll never know because she cannot get together the capital to make it happen. A smart clever lower-middle-class woman in the 1700s who resents bending her will to people stupider than she is does not, realistically, attain great heights. She ends up in jail. That is how it really probably would go.

Given this, I found it interesting that the reader’s guide at the back of the book seemed to think Mary was such an extremely unlikeable character. The questions were all like, What were the things Mary did that you liked the least? When do you think was Mary’s doom sealed? On a scale of one to ten how much did you hate Mary? (I am exaggerating but not that much.) I kept thinking, yeah, but if she’d been able to get her shit together and open her own dressmaking shop — staying at this same level of ruthlessness, this same level of friendliness — there would have been no talk at all of unsympathetic characters. She’s totally sympathetic, but she’s just in a super shitty situation all the time. Her most relatable, modernest characteristics are often the ones that destroy her.

Basically, if you are ever feeling frustrated with the ExceptoGirls of literature, Slammerkin can be your antidote. You can read it and think about the wretched miserable life your most frustrating ExceptoGirl would actually have had. And either that will vindictively please you, or else (as in my case) you will be like, “You know what? ExceptoGirls are maybe not so bad after all. Maybe I do not want all that much realism in my historical fiction.”

YES. MAYBE YOU DO NOT.

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