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A review by dlberglund
War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi
4.0
“Action packed” is not too strong of a descriptor for this book, set in the 22nd century in the disputed land of Biafra and Nigeria. Much of the book involves the fighting involved in a guerrilla war, plus a war for survival, plus the kind of fighting that happens when the fighting is over, plus there's....war. It was too much violence for me for a lot of it, but I really wanted to see what Onyii and Ify, two sisters separated by kidnapping, would do next. The perspective shifts between them, but I still never felt completely connected to Ify and what she was going through. i could never predict her actions, and she felt distant to me. But Onyii, who becomes more and more Augmented by embedded tech, felt more alive to me.
There's a lot to dig into in this book- the ethics of different sides of a war that goes on for generations, the stripping of resources, nuclear fallout, independent young women creating a home that is actually a battle station, chosen family, coloirsm and tribalism, limits/boundaries of technology and humanity, AI......there's so much in this book! It's definitely a fresh take on Afrofuturism and speculative future-history blend. I enjoyed Onyebuchi's other books better, however, because the action movies sequences in War Girls overwhelmed the characters for me.
There's a lot to dig into in this book- the ethics of different sides of a war that goes on for generations, the stripping of resources, nuclear fallout, independent young women creating a home that is actually a battle station, chosen family, coloirsm and tribalism, limits/boundaries of technology and humanity, AI......there's so much in this book! It's definitely a fresh take on Afrofuturism and speculative future-history blend. I enjoyed Onyebuchi's other books better, however, because the action movies sequences in War Girls overwhelmed the characters for me.