A review by bookish_leslie
Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No

2.0

My rating scale, for reference:

  • 1 Star: Hated it
  • 2 Stars: Didn't like it
  • 3 Stars: Meh
  • 4 Stars: Liked it
  • 5 Stars: Loved it
 
I obviously didn’t care for this book, given my rating. It wasn’t all bad, of course. For example, I appreciated how knowledge was seen as the topmost goal of the Leopard People, as opposed to the goal of material gain in the real world, and how Leopard people were supposed to love and embrace their physical shortcomings. I liked, too, how not everything was glossed over and made perfect - for example, how (spoiler)
Sunny’s team didn't win the soccer match
. It was also interesting to read a book that wasn’t North American or Eurocentric, though I found the places, cultural references, and language/slang harder to follow because of this. 

So yes, there were some things about this novel I enjoyed, but overall, I found the story to be fairly dark and off-putting. Here were some of the reasons why:

  • The sexism and misogyny throughout the book was horrific.

  • The adults in general were terribly abusive. Canings, floggings, beatings - didn’t matter if it was parents, teachers, or magical authorities; they all were abusive in some way. And then the kids beat each other up too. Gee, I wonder why, given the example they were set? 

  • The plot was pretty weak. The characters mostly floated from one scene to another without any progression or development.

  • The characters weren’t very believable. Other than their constant in-fighting, they usually acted much more like 16 or 17-year-olds than the 12ish-year-olds they were supposed to be. 

  • It was infuriating how information about Leopard people was so slowly dripped and gate kept, and never ended up being well-explained. 

  • I didn’t understand how or why Sunny’s sun sensitivity was (spoiler)
    suddenly and magically cured, especially with the emphasis within Leopard society of embracing shortcomings.


  • So much emphasis was put on how Leopard magic wasn’t genetic…except that it seemed to be mostly genetic? There were a lot of inconsistencies like this throughout.

  • The adults were constantly putting the children at risk for no discernible reason, and it bugs me to no end when children are (spoiler)
    sent in to save the day when there are always more qualified adults. Why!? 12 year old children were sent in this book to confront a serial killer while the adults just sat back and watched. These kids weren’t given any information or training or help. Just suddenly summoned and sent in to do their best. And if they died? Oh well. Greater good and all that. But weirdly, they did succeed. I'm obviously glad they did, but how were they successful when so many others more experienced than them had failed? More detail was given to their irrelevant soccer game than to this climax.


  • There was no cohesion in the tone of this book. One minute I might be reading about an adorable bug who loved to be praised for the things it made out of trash, and the next I might be reading about small children getting their eyes gouged out by a serial killer. WTF?

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