Join us for Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, our book for November

so, would you agree with some of this good reads review? Are they being overly dramatic about it all? I just looked up the reviews and I'll admit I'm not that excited about this one.

[Good read review](#s "A number of reviewers have talked about how they struggled with how dark the book was; how difficult it was to read accounts of rape and genital mutilation and racial genocide. There would, I think, be something wrong with me if I didn't find reading about that sort of thing viscerally unpleasant, but all were integral parts of the book's world building, and while they may have made reading some sections an uncomfortable experience, they didn't detract from my appreciation of the work as a whole.

What did detract was the characters, or more specifically their relationships with each other. The main character's relationship with her parental figures is positive, but they're soon pushed out of the spotlight--not unsurprising, in a coming of age novel. That leaves us with her relationship with her teacher (who hates her) her friends (who continually mistrust and abandon her) and her paramour (who calls her "woman" instead of her name, tells her she's stupid, and orders her to shut up with distressing regularity). All are constantly fighting and rarely seem to like or care for one another.

The protagonist's romantic relationship was pretty much the breaking point for me. I felt like I was constantly being told they were passionately in love, and then shown a couple that was, at best, passionately in lust and violently abusive toward one another. And I simply couldn't reconcile Onye's actions toward Mwita with her presentation as a determined crusader against their society's misogyny.

The plot itself was fairly standard prophecized quest fantasy until the end, when it veered off into metaphysics that seemed unsupported by anything that came before. The world, in contrast, was unusual for the genre, and well-drawn. If the protagonists had been more pleasant to spend time with, I would have appreciated the travelogue experience. As it was, I had to grit my teeth to get through it.

I might try something else by this author, if I was promised characters who actually enjoyed each other's company, but it wouldn't be high on my priority list. ")

/r/Fantasy Thread Parent