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nolalee's review against another edition
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Chronic illness, and Terminal illness
Moderate: Animal death, Medical content, Gun violence, Suicidal thoughts, Panic attacks/disorders, and Medical trauma
Minor: Body horror and Blood
laurareads87's review
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
albernikolauras's review against another edition
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Violence, Chronic illness, Animal death, Ableism, and Car accident
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
pvbobrien's review
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
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism and Blood
Moderate: Animal death, Drug use, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, and Murder
Minor: Pregnancy, Car accident, Child death, and Suicidal thoughts
casitafeliz's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
reflective
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
5.0
Having recently read Dune I found some interesting thematic parallels with those books. This book really moves a lot more quickly and pulls you in. I enjoyed this book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Abandonment, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Blood, Body shaming, Bullying, Car accident, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Colonisation, Genocide, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Murder, and Hate crime
deedireads's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-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? It's complicated
4.0
All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/.
TL;DR REVIEW:
Noor is a quick but exciting, hard sci-fi novel that offers some really great commentary on ableism, privacy, and environmentalism. Not my favorite Okorafor, but a good one!
For you if: You are looking for more disability rep in sci-fi.
FULL REVIEW:
Thank you, DAW Books, for the electronic advanced copy of this book. I am a huge fan of Nnedi Okorafor — her novel Who Fears Death is a true standout — so I am always excited to read her new work. While this one wasn’t my favorite of hers, I definitely liked it, and I think it does some really great stuff.
The story is set in a future Africa, where a giant, ongoing storm (like the red eye on Jupiter) feeds the planet’s energy sources, making it the most commercially coveted area in the world. It’s about a girl named AO, which she likes to say stands for Artificial Organism. Born disabled, AO has chosen to embrace technological augmentations seen as unnatural by the rest of society in order to live a fuller life. A cataclysmic event in the beginning of the book sends her on the run from the Corporation and toward the heart of the storm.
This book is short and reads fast at 224 pages, but it manages to offer a ton of commentary on privacy, environmentalism, and ableism. I love Okorafor’s storytelling style, which is unapologetically rooted in Nigerian traditions, even if it leads some Westernized readers to say this or that thing (pacing, dialogue, etc) “just felt off.” This one is no exception. I think it’s more than worth the couple of hours it will take you to read.
TL;DR REVIEW:
Noor is a quick but exciting, hard sci-fi novel that offers some really great commentary on ableism, privacy, and environmentalism. Not my favorite Okorafor, but a good one!
For you if: You are looking for more disability rep in sci-fi.
FULL REVIEW:
Thank you, DAW Books, for the electronic advanced copy of this book. I am a huge fan of Nnedi Okorafor — her novel Who Fears Death is a true standout — so I am always excited to read her new work. While this one wasn’t my favorite of hers, I definitely liked it, and I think it does some really great stuff.
The story is set in a future Africa, where a giant, ongoing storm (like the red eye on Jupiter) feeds the planet’s energy sources, making it the most commercially coveted area in the world. It’s about a girl named AO, which she likes to say stands for Artificial Organism. Born disabled, AO has chosen to embrace technological augmentations seen as unnatural by the rest of society in order to live a fuller life. A cataclysmic event in the beginning of the book sends her on the run from the Corporation and toward the heart of the storm.
This book is short and reads fast at 224 pages, but it manages to offer a ton of commentary on privacy, environmentalism, and ableism. I love Okorafor’s storytelling style, which is unapologetically rooted in Nigerian traditions, even if it leads some Westernized readers to say this or that thing (pacing, dialogue, etc) “just felt off.” This one is no exception. I think it’s more than worth the couple of hours it will take you to read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Suicidal thoughts, Ableism, and Violence
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