Reviews with content warning for Ableism - Noor

Reviews tagging 'Ableism'

Noor by Nnedi Okorafor

32 reviews

elly29's review against another edition

challenging dark 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

4.0

Interesting. It poses interesting questions about privacy and self-determination, particularly when large corporations or the government are involved and provide services. Definitely a story about the struggle of traditional-way-of-life against modern-way-of-life, with some interesting Orwellian twists. AO's choices at the end, while sticking up for the herdsmen and those who want to be themselves, also have consequences for the greater global population at large, which I'm not sure I agree with.

But overall, it was a neat story about a cybernetically-enhanced woman, trying to make her own choices.

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laurareads87's review

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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.

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albernikolauras's review against another edition

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adventurous tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

Noor follows AO, a woman with cybernetic parts, in a not-so-distant future. After some traumatic events, she heads toward the desert and a large dust storm at the top of Nigeria.

Out of the 3 works I have read by Nnedi Okorafor, this is my favorite. The world was captivating and the all-seeing, all-controlling company and the way power was generated in this book brought forth a lot of themes on capitalism, whose land can you take to provide power for the masses, personhood, the value of life, and your privacy (or lack of it) within the tech you own. The characters were very interesting to follow - AO and DNA were such interesting characters to follow.

The issue for me came from Okorafor's writing. I can say for a fact I probably won't try any of her longer form fiction because it takes me so long to decipher her sentences and leaves me a little disconnected from the story. I am not deadset against her shorter fiction though, because her ideas are always fascinating.

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onemorepagecrew's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.5

For me, books by Nnedi Okorafor are always exciting. I find her style of writing to be captivating and the concepts are always just the right blend of futurism and realism. In Noor, we meet Anwuli Okwudili, who prefers to go by AO as a nod to both her name and Artificial Organism.

AO has many mechanical body augmentations to her body both from birth and from a car accident later in her life. She’s embraced this about herself even though others don’t always understand her. An incident happens that jump-starts the suspenseful and eventful part of the novel, placing AO at the center of a future Nigeria where technology and government are in a battle with individuals, and AO’s unique powers are incredibly useful.

Overall, this was another enjoyable book by an author I gravitate towards. It touches on race, class, technology, artificial intelligence, and more giving the reader plenty to ruminate on. I would have loved more insight into the technology itself and a better understanding of this future society to ground myself in the story, but it was a good read nonetheless.

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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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piperlee's review against another edition

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adventurous tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

things I enjoyed:
- world building!! (okorafor’s specialty, I think)
- allegorical theme
- setting in futuristic Nigeria
- interesting people groups

things that fell flat:
- I didn’t feel any connection to the characters - they were poorly developed
- “emotional” parts didn't feel emotional - again felt underdeveloped
- there wasn’t a clear direction for the story?
- portrayal of disability/AO’s attitude & vocabulary was weird/negative
- several uses of the word “cripple(d)”
- mostly everything just felt like a first draft without the details/dialogue/etc. fleshing out the story to make it feel immersive & interesting

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nicklybear's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.5

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lizclark81's review against another edition

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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

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leahrosereads's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging reflective medium-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

4.25

The basics
Enjoyment: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Start: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
Characters: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Atmosphere: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Plot: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ending: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
Style: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

What I loved
Much like Dr. Okorafor's other novellas, this one starts off with a bang and then doesn't let up. The characters are phenomenally written and it was impossible to not root for them and hope that everything would be OK. AO and DNA go through so much here just trying to stay alive.

A lot of the science and tech went over my head, but I still felt like I was able to enjoy the story and the topics it was exploring.

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pvbobrien's review

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adventurous challenging 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

4.0

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