A review by inirac
The Ear, the Eye & the Arm by Nancy Farmer

adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

I remember loving this book as a kid, and I want to preserve that (reading Afrofuturism before I knew what that was!). Here are my thoughts reading this as an adult: 1) what the heck is going on?? the narrative is a bit more disjointed than I remembered but I guess a young adult book and Newberry Award winner can blow past major plot points? 2) The detectives are far more bumbling than I remembered as well, but they were my favorite characters as a kid and still are though less lovable than I want them to be, 3) uh way more peril than I remember too, with a more-than-casual gloss over of a 13 year old bearing a child to an adult man? woof. Also I'm wishing this was "own voices" content and was written by someone more familiar with Zimbabwe and the social complexities of their politics, but consider my interest piqued to now go seek that out. I think there was a lot of potential to make more bold comments about Father Matsika's violent war to gain control of the government and go a bit more into the Gonwannans sympathetic side, but jk lets just make them evil witches who kill kids! 
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