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zombiezami's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
This is my favorite book by the author that I've read so far!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Hate crime, Medical trauma, Mass/school shootings, Ableism, Violence, Death, Chronic illness, Blood, Sexism, Misogyny, Gun violence, Colonisation, Body horror, Religious bigotry, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Genocide, Gore, and Abandonment
Moderate: Drug use, Alcohol, Pregnancy, Suicidal thoughts, and Sexual content
Minor: Child death, Car accident, and Toxic relationship
Eugenicslaurareads87's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Having enjoyed quite a few of Nnedi Okorafor's books, I was happy to finally read Noor. The story follows AO, a young Nigerian woman who uses several prosthetics and has had numerous cybernetic body modifications, having been born with physical impairments + later having been in an accident. While some biomedical technologies are accepted in her society (pacemakers, etc.), she is viewed with judgment and targeted with violence for having "too much," being "not person enough." She ends up on the run, with both government agents and a major corporation in pursuit. There are a lot of themes here -- environmental degradation, medical abuse, (lack of) privacy, capitalist exploitation, resource extractive colonialism -- as well as an exciting story with a compelling protagonist that kept me interested start to finish. Recommended.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Hate crime, Gun violence, Violence, Murder, Death, Medical content, Blood, Animal death, and Animal cruelty
Minor: Car accident
tigger89's review against another edition
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Violence, and Death
The narrating character experiences PTSD-like symptoms throughout the book, with repeated incidents of triggers leading to vivid memories of violence and gore.bluejayreads's review against another edition
I have thoroughly enjoyed several of Nnedi Okorafor’s books (*cough*Binti*cough*), and found others to be just okay. Noor unfortunately falls into the latter category.
Nnedi’s books are not much for strong plots. This one is very similar to Remote Control in that a girl (in this case, a woman) who is different and powerful and terrifying to everyone else is driven from her home and goes on a long journey. In this case, AO was born with her legs withered and one arm just not there. A car accident in her teens destroyed her legs even further. She chose cybernetic replacements and other technological enhancements that are basically really awesome disability aids (honestly, if I had the option to replace my legs instead of using a cane I’d do it in a heartbeat). But the people around her think because so much of her body is metal that she has somehow become less than human.
On her journey to nowhere in particular, she joins DNA, a herdsman with only two cows after his group and most of their cattle were massacred for being herdsmen. AO wants people to accept that being more high-tech doesn’t make her less human, and DNA wants people to accept that sticking to his people’s traditional ways of life instead of selling his cows and going to work for a global megacorporation doesn’t make him a lesser person.
As is typical of Nnedi’s work, there isn’t much of a plot. The journey is the story, and AO and DNA travel to DNA’s village, through an eternal sandstorm, and other interesting places. The story is told in first person, and AO’s tangents build up the africanfuturist world these characters inhabit. I was interested at first as I was getting oriented to the characters and the world, and then the story started to drag. Neither of the characters had goals, there was no endpoint in sight, and it didn’t feel like either the characters or the story were going anywhere.
AO and DNA finally got to a place that seemed like it would be safe, and they both seemed to like it there. It felt like a reasonable ending for the kind of story this is and I was expecting the story to wrap up soon. But there kept being more chapters. Finally, I checked the timestamp and discovered there was still a quarter of the book to go. I had no idea what would be happening in all that time – neither character had found anything like a goal and there was no current outside threat to escape – and I was getting really tired of following along on what felt like a pointless journey.
So I stopped. I liked the world and the characters could have been interesting if there had been any point to the story. They weren’t going anywhere in particular, they had no goals or objectives – not even “find somewhere safe,” that happened by accident – and I was, quite frankly, bored. If even one of them had been trying to do anything in particular, I think I would have enjoyed this story a lot more.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, and Blood
Moderate: Medical content, Death, Animal death, Fire/Fire injury, and Body horror
Minor: Car accident and Sexual content
lizclark81's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism, Blood, Colonisation, Death, Murder, and Violence
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