Review by starrysteph - Somadina

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starrysteph 's review for:

Somadina by Akwaeke Emezi

5.0

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-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

Magical. Immersive. Hard-hitting. A sharp gaze both inwards at our current reality and a beam of hope towards the future.

What does it mean to be too much, to be too frightening, even in a world that has accepted the extraordinary as ordinary? How can you find groundedness, solace, and love when you have been exiled from your home?

Somadina is everything you learn to expect from an Akwaeke Emezi book.

Somadina and her twin Jayaike are attached at the hip and are bonded so tightly they almost feel like one person. Their West African town is detached from the rest of the world thanks to a terrifying chasm known as the Split, which also grants every child one magical power once they come of age.

The trouble is, Somadina and Jayaike have an unusual coming-of-age. And as the town turns against Somadina, Jayaike vanishes from his bed. She’ll do anything it takes to bring him home, no matter the dangers, no matter the natural borders of her world, and no matter the community that refuses to hear her. Somadina has to set off on an otherworldly journey and learn some truths about herself … and her world.

The darkness Emezi loves to spotlight is a bit lessened for their third young adult story, but this is still not an easy story of growing up. Somadina faces backlash from the people she should have always been able to trust, and she has to make terrible choices.

But through her struggles, she learns to see the light within herself. She learns to heal, and that forgiveness will be a journey. She learns that her community is a web and that she can find more love anywhere she turns. And she embraces her powers and her deity, grounding herself in her spirit.

There’s darkness within Somadina that she must learn to accept and balance, but she is always very likeable and earnest. I loved being in her head and I thought her characterization was beautifully done.

Somadina’s community is filled with magic, but so many of them refuse to open up to new strangeness. They keep things contained, they report their powers, and they inflict sharp punishments. They need to understand their history in order to shape their future, but even though it impacts them every day, they don’t see the full scope of their past. (Not terribly hard to place this in our current reality.)

Though the world is fantastical, there is also truth here - Emezi beautifully integrates Igbo culture and pieces of their home. The culture and world are so richly described and honored. Emezi also writes in the afterward about the pain of being in exile from your home when it is not safe to return to the land that raised you, and that has inspired a lot of Somadina’s journey.

Somadina’s world is queernormative, but if you are a spirit-touched child or a child who is marked in some way as different, you are pushed to the outskirts of society. It hurts, and even at the end of her journey she doesn’t quite feel whole. But she has hope and dreams for her future, and that’s what is most important. Not every box is checked and not every question is answered, but the ending was exactly right to me.

Of course, there’s no way I could end this review without shouting about the prose. It’s perfection. Every sentence is precise, the world is expansive, and you flow from scene to scene with clarity and ease.

I totally flaked on jotting down quotes, so I might have to come back and add some of my favorites another time.

Another brilliant Akwaeke Emezi piece!!

CW: death (child), murder, war, kidnapping, torture, animal cruelty/death, abandonment, body horror, bullying, cannibalism (sort of), dometic abuse

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(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

Content Warnings