Noor by Nnedi Okorafor Published by Astra Publishing House on November 16, 2021
Genres: Fiction / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Science Fiction / Cyberpunk, Fiction / Science Fiction / Genetic Engineering
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9780698175174From Africanfuturist luminary Okorafor comes a new science fiction novel of intense action and thoughtful rumination on biotechnology, destiny, and humanity in a near-future Nigeria.
Anwuli Okwudili prefers to be called AO. To her, these initials have always stood for Artificial Organism. AO has never really felt...natural, and that's putting it lightly. Her parents spent most of the days before she was born praying for her peaceful passing because even in-utero she was "wrong". But she lived. Then came the car accident years later that disabled her even further. Yet instead of viewing her strange body the way the world views it, as freakish, unnatural, even the work of the devil, AO embraces all that she is: A woman with a ton of major and necessary body augmentations. And then one day she goes to her local market and everything goes wrong.
Once on the run, she meets a Fulani herdsman named DNA and the race against time across the deserts of Northern Nigeria begins. In a world where all things are streamed, everyone is watching the "reckoning of the murderess and the terrorist" and the "saga of the wicked woman and mad man" unfold. This fast-paced, relentless journey of tribe, destiny, body, and the wonderland of technology revels in the fact that the future sometimes isn't so predictable. Expect the unaccepted.
I’m always surprised when authors can pack so much into such small books, and Nnedi Okorafor is no exception.
The book opens with a bang right away of AO killing men at the market who were beating her because she has many augmentations. Something AO has dealt with her whole life is people looking at her like she’s wrong. Not woman or person enough. What I love is that these feelings weren’t written onto AO’s characterization. AO loves who she is, how she looks, and has no problem with the augmentations. I love that there’s no plot of her trying to learn to love herself because she already does.
The other main character who AO meets once on the run after the market is DNA, a Fulani herdsman, who is being wrongly accused as a terrorist by the government. There’s not as much focus on DNA as there was on AO, mostly due to the book being written in her first person point-of-view. We know he’s traditional, willing to help AO, and cares for his family and tribe, there’s not much else that’s revealed with DNA. My one complaint is that there wasn’t as much focus on DNA’s characterization and there is for AO.
The world-building was so well done, I felt like this could definitely be a future Nigeria. A dystopian world that is run by corporations. I mean replace Ultimate Corp with Amazon and you wouldn’t know the difference. There’s so much that can be talked about with this novel: cybernetics, tradition, renewable energy, the critiques of capitalism, and gender roles and identification. Again, the ability to pack so much in something so small always impresses me.
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