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A review by entazis
The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
This is a really good anthology, giving us stories covering a wide range of topics, settings, themes and motifs across the three main speculative fiction genres--fantasy, scifi, and horror. For me personally, where this book excels was with horror stories--there's a lot of chilling, atmospheric, dark stories whose ideas I just loved. But that's probably simply a personal preference for that genre.
The stories collected here are reprints from some well-known and notable speculative fiction magazines so you know you're for a good ride.
As is usually the case with anthologies, not all stories were for me, there's stuff I didn't like, but, as is also the case with anthologies, I found new, interesting authors that I definitely plan to continue reading and following.
I want to give a shoutout to some faves:
Things Boys Do by Pemi Aguda (such a fantastic dark story with beautiful prose)
The Many Lives of an Abiku, and The Goatkeeper's Harvest, both by Tobi Ogundiran (both excellent and dark with creepy children)
Desiccant by Craig Laurence Gidney (a terrifying way you could spin vampires that became so unterrifying last decade or so, to me, at least)
Dissasembly by Makena Onjerika (the writing, the topic, the idea, all of it hit me hard)
The River od Night by Tlotlo Tsamaase (another story about depression done beautifully)
This book also has my favorite story from another anthology: Egoli, by T. L. Huchu (Africanfuturism: An Anthology) which made me really happy.
The stories collected here are reprints from some well-known and notable speculative fiction magazines so you know you're for a good ride.
As is usually the case with anthologies, not all stories were for me, there's stuff I didn't like, but, as is also the case with anthologies, I found new, interesting authors that I definitely plan to continue reading and following.
I want to give a shoutout to some faves:
Things Boys Do by Pemi Aguda (such a fantastic dark story with beautiful prose)
The Many Lives of an Abiku, and The Goatkeeper's Harvest, both by Tobi Ogundiran (both excellent and dark with creepy children)
Desiccant by Craig Laurence Gidney (a terrifying way you could spin vampires that became so unterrifying last decade or so, to me, at least)
Dissasembly by Makena Onjerika (the writing, the topic, the idea, all of it hit me hard)
The River od Night by Tlotlo Tsamaase (another story about depression done beautifully)
This book also has my favorite story from another anthology: Egoli, by T. L. Huchu (Africanfuturism: An Anthology) which made me really happy.