Reviews with content warning for Body horror - Noor

Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

Noor by Nnedi Okorafor

10 reviews

novella42's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious 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? No

4.0

It means the world to me to see disabled characters in speculative fiction written by disabled authors.

I had the rare experience of talking with the author briefly yesterday in a thread on social media (I feel okay sharing this here because it was in a public post). I mentioned I had picked up Noor recently because friends in disability circles had recommended it. She responded, "Noor was my first time (aside from my memoir) nakedly letting the story be about disability. My forthcoming novel is even MORE so. It’s time. I’m glad that Noor is making it to those circles! Yes!"

Needless to say, I went and found a copy of her 2019 memoir Broken Places & Outer Spaces immediately, since I wasn't aware such a thing even existed. And then I finished Noor. This is another long review, but it's partly to help myself remember details when I bring it up at a book club.

There were some powerful elements at play in Noor. I felt moved by the protagonist's rage and was grateful so much of the story centered on the impact of others on her disability--not just her parents, brother, and romantic partners, but also the systemic factors at play like the government and the corporation that made her prosthetics. The way strangers from different strata of society viewed her disability and her enhancements was very telling.

The way she grapples with her congenital disability and internalized ableism reminded me a lot of my own struggles with the same. I was born with a fragile skeleton. A mess, too.

I'd always had it coming. In the dark this was all clear. I emerged from the warm protective darkness of my mother's womb poorly made. A mess. And then years later, fate had unmade me. How dare I embrace what I was and wasn't, and build myself?

Sometimes the language around injury, surgery, brokenness, and body horror got to be too much for me and my C-PTSD. I had to rest several times and asked for help from my partner to co-regulate my nervous system before I could continue. But I felt it was worthwhile, for lines like this:

Sometimes when something breaks, things come out of the cracks.

It felt like the concept of kintsugi, only instead of using gold to repair ceramic, this felt more like repairing a body with fury and power, in response to injustice. It tied in with a theme of just wanting to be left alone to repair and rebuild and live your life.

I think my favorite parts were related to the way she embraced her own identity and strengths and gravitated toward others who saw her worth as a human being. My favorite scene was a tiny detail but it rang especially true for me. (Very mild spoilers for one small moment.)

It was a scene where someone teachers her a mindfulness exercise, and she explains something about that which is difficult for her, and so the teacher guides her to look outside herself and focus on something she could see. That was powerful, and was one of many examples of how much it helps for an author to have inside knowledge of the characters they are portraying, especially when it comes to disability.

Let me explain. People who are not yet disabled or who haven't dealt with chronic pain seem to see body-based mindfulness as some kind of panacea, but going inward and scanning your body is a terrifying experience when your body is a war zone. Rather than telling the person struggling that they're doing it wrong, that there's something broken with them and they won't be able to find inner peace, I love how this scene skipped right to the solution of turning outward for mindfulness in other ways. I wish more people knew that was an option. In 2019 it took me months of shame and depression to figure out why my repeated attempts at mindfulness and body scan meditations seemed to make everything worse. I only figured it out because I finally tried my luck on a therapist.

Anyway. Seeing this phenomenon depicted so easily and clearly felt absolutely wonderful and affirming.

The book felt a little uneven at times with choices I didn't understand, both by the characters and the author, but then again I am not Nigerian or Nigerian American. Just because I don't fully understand it, doesn't mean it's not an understandable choice.

I'm very glad this book exists, and very glad to have read it.

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liter_aly's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful 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? Yes

5.0

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michaelion's review against another edition

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adventurous dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

The biggest flaw is that it's too short. I haven't delved into sci-fi that much but I seem to like it, and this book needed more room to be. Heavy lore drops that are mostly tell not show, but not in a way that's irritating, more in a way that this is a huge world that wanted to be explored more. I liked a lot of elements of it though and really related to the main character.

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mgmotley's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional tense 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

4.25

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ashleybakerwrites's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-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

3.75

I enjoyed this book from the middle onward. The hook isn't particularly strong for me, but it was very enjoyable past that. I loved the world building and anticapitalist message. A lot of it felt more fantasy than sci-fi, but there was definitely enough sci-fi in it for the average sci-fi reader. The journey was very interesting. And the pinch points felt very real for the characters.

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bookishcori's review against another edition

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adventurous tense fast-paced

3.75

This was an enjoyable SFF novella about capitalism and colonization.

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zombiezami's review against another edition

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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!

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nolalee's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Noor is a standalone, wildly inventive and imaginative near future in West Africa. With nods to our current time, the story is grounded in reality while blasting off into a futuristic world of cybernetics, surveillance, drones and desert dweller hackers. The plot had some holes that needed more time to be fleshed out before the book ended. Noor feels more like a novella or short story, but maybe that adds to the mystery of AO.

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bluejayreads's review against another edition

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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.

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rhiannonafternoon's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes

4.5

This book is unlike anything I’ve ever read. Okorafor has a truly refined way of creating atmosphere, which keeps you engaged through the journey of AO and her companion DNA. DNA’s cows are named Carpe Diem and GPS, which I also love. This book celebrates uniqueness, and overcomes personal challenges for both characters, while gradually revealing secrets that build on AO’s entire being. This is a sci-fi must read.

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