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

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This book was a fun read. The world-building reflects a great deal of work and planning, besides which I love a heist story. The incorporation of traditional Nigerian mythology with modern ideas and structures made for interesting commentary on colonialism and capitalism. The idea of the spirit world structured as corporations with "pray pay" and spirit-eating freelancers was intriguing and a fun way to think about the shadow world. Really well done, there.

I found the regular timeline jumps a bit jarring, rather than the clever device that I hoped they would prove to be. The bouncing around required extra effort from me as a reader and, most of the time, I wasn't invested enough in the story for that to be an easy ask.

While the timeline jumps fleshed out some of the histories of Nneoma and Shigidi, they didn't do enough to get me invested in the relationship. It wasn't a distraction from the main plot, but I also wasn't convinced that it added much to the story either.

Overall, this is an interesting premise and I'd be interested to see more in this genre from Talabi.

I was provided with a free digital copy of this book by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
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