“Let the reader beware that there is juju in this book.”
Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Warrior (Viking 2017) is the second installment in the remarkable middle grade Nsibidi Script series that has been dubbed the Nigerian Harry Potter. If you read my review of the first of the series, Akata Witch, you’ll note that I don’t like that comparison because I think it does Okorafor and her characters a disservice.
Akata Warrior opens two years after the events of Akata Witch. Sunny, an American-born albino Nigerian girl, is still developing her magical powers and spending a lot of time with and learning from her friends and Oha coven: Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha. She is also learning a lot from her mentor, Sweet Cream. And while Sunny is more connected to her magical side in this novel, connections with the Lamb side are pretty non-existent. One of the conflicts I really enjoyed in the first novel was the disconnect with her dualities – American but Nigerian. Black but albino. Magical but a free agent. That tension, while not resolved, is not present in this second installment. There is some tension with dualities as it relates to her spiritual mask and doubling, but even that seems a bit hollow.
While I still adore Sunny and everything about the Leopard society, this follow-up was a bit of a disappointment. It seems to suffer from somehow doing too much yet not enough. It needs to be shorter and tighter. I want that tension and drama and high stakes oozing from the pages. There is drama, for sure. Sunny violating Leopard society rules to help her brother whose found himself in a dangerous gang and the resulting punishment? Honestly, that could have been the novel because that was thrilling. Sunny’s battle with the masquerade? Brilliant. The meeting with the spider? Entirely captivating. And the lake monster? My one complaint there is that I didn’t get enough of Mami Wata. (I know she isn’t mine, but when she shows up in literature, it brings me instant joy.)
Will I read Akata Woman? Is water wet? Absolutely I will. The second installment may not have lived up to the first, but this is a phenomenal middle grade fantasy series and I will see it through. (Plus, I have to see how the coven handles what happened in Akata Warrior and the secrets that are being revealed in Akata Woman.)
Read this series.
A Girl Named Tommi 