A review by rotheche
Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi

adventurous dark emotional 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

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It's a fast read with lots of action. The present-day story happenes over a very short span of time, but it's spaced out by flashbacks — every heist needs its cast of characters, so the flashbacks explain where everyone comes from, in pretty entertaining fashion. Pay attention to the dates in the chapter headings, they'll help keep you anchored. 

At the beginning of the novel, Shigidi is an underpaid, unappreciated cog in the Orisha Spirit Company, fulfilling prayer requests made by the (ever-diminishing) faithful in return for scraps of pray-pay, the belief that keeps him alive. Nneoma is a free agent who runs into him on one of those missions and convinces him that chucking in the corporate gig and coming with her is a better option. Through that lens, it's a pretty good critique of capitalism because, even though Nneoma and Shigidi are outside the corporate world, they're still trapped by it; they're still caught up in the Orisha spirit company's internal machinations, dodging border controls and so on. Every freelancer likely knows the feeling — you're outside the system's demands, but also have none of its safeguards. 

As well as a solid poke at capitalism, Talabi takes some pretty good shots at colonialism: a Yoruba entity can't simply pop into the British Museum and take back a Yoruba artefact, even though it was his in the first place. Nope, they're guarded by the Royal British Spirit Bureau, and some pretty big mythological bruisers — the British Museum does not give things back. Between the two, there's a lot in this book about power: who has it, how they got it, what they'll do to keep it, and how they treat the people with less of it. 

At its heart, though, it's a love story. Both Shigidi and Nneoma have issues: Shigidi's original form wwas one designed to induce nightmares in his victims so he feels both unloved and unloveable, and Nneoma still feels the loss of her sister after centuries, which leads to the situation where Shigidi loves Nneoma but she is unwilling to admit that the reverse is true (again, an imbalance in power). What finally pushes that towards a resolution is tied up in the whole heist.