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jennyyates 's review for:
Noor
by Nnedi Okorafor
As always, Okorafor writes a good story, set in the future but with lots of correspondences to modern life. This one is set in Nigeria at a time in which one particular corporation is running pretty much everything.
The protagonist, AO, is a young woman with a lot of cybernetic parts, due to both birth defects and a later accident. They work better than the usual human arms and legs, but they freak people out, and early in the story, she is attacked in the marketplace and responds with automatic violence. Running away from the mess, she is pursued – by the government, or by the corporation, or are they one and the same? Pairing up with a Fulani herdsman who is also on the run, she goes into an ecological wildness, a desert of swirling winds where humans can’t easily live.
There are a few facile tropes in this novel – like the wise man in the desert – but generally, it’s very well plotted. AO finds a community of people running from the government/corporation, and manages to prove her innocence, and expose the wrongdoing of the higher-ups. It’s exciting, adventurous, and hits on a number of important issues.
The protagonist, AO, is a young woman with a lot of cybernetic parts, due to both birth defects and a later accident. They work better than the usual human arms and legs, but they freak people out, and early in the story, she is attacked in the marketplace and responds with automatic violence. Running away from the mess, she is pursued – by the government, or by the corporation, or are they one and the same? Pairing up with a Fulani herdsman who is also on the run, she goes into an ecological wildness, a desert of swirling winds where humans can’t easily live.
There are a few facile tropes in this novel – like the wise man in the desert – but generally, it’s very well plotted. AO finds a community of people running from the government/corporation, and manages to prove her innocence, and expose the wrongdoing of the higher-ups. It’s exciting, adventurous, and hits on a number of important issues.