One Way Witch
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Set in the universe Africanfuturist luminary Nnedi Okorafor first introduced in the World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death, One Way Witch is the second in the She Who Knows trilogy The world has forgotten Onyesonwu. As a teen, Najeeba learned to become the beast of wind, fire and dust: the kponyungo. When that took too much from her, including the life of her father, she let it all go, and for a time, she was happy — until only a few years later, when the small, normal life she’d built was violently destroyed. Now in her forties and years beyond the death of her second husband, Najeeba has just lost her beloved daughter. Onyesonwu saved the world. Najeeba knows this well, but the world does not. This is how the juju her daughter evoked works. One other person who remembers is Onyesonwu’s teacher Aro, a harsh and hard-headed sorcerer. Najeeba has decided to ask him to teach her the Mystic Points, the powerful heart of sorcery. There is something awful Najeeba needs to kill and the Mystic Points are the only way. Najeeba is truly her daughter’s mother. When Aro agrees to help, Najeeba is at last ready to forge her future. But first, she must confront her past — for certain memories cannot lie in unmarked graves.
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2 primary books#2 in She Who Knows
She Who Knows is a 2-book series with 2 released primary works first released in 2024 with contributions by Nnedi Okorafor.
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2 stars, Metaphorosis reviews
Summary
Najeeba is a witch who can transform to a spirit creature of flame and wind. Her daughter formed by rape is a sorceress who remade the entire world. But Najeeba wants more - to understand the Mystic Points of power in the world, and become a full sorceress herself.
Review
I said in my review of Firespitter that DAW didn't seem to know what it was doing with the book, and this sequel hasn't changed my mind. This book has even less going on than the previous one – it's largely a description of the fact that the narrator is training in sorcery; not even really how she trains, beyond some vague, muddled description. It really made me lose patience with this series, and perhaps even with how Okorafor tells a story.
Okorafor starts with a defensive, ‘I can't explain what my previous book was about, but here's my [fairly useless] summary'. It refers to Who Fears Death, and seems to suggest this book and Firespitter are really just backstory for that novel, which I have not read. If so, that may explain why these books are so formless and opaque. It begins to feel as if many of Okorafor's books are connected, and I just don't have the right grounding, not having read the right set in the right order. However it may be, I found this book not only dull, but downright irritating. I'm taking a big step back from, ‘Okorafor is a very interesting writer new to me' and toward ‘Okorafor's books are occasionally interesting, but overall muddled'.
Very little happens in this book. Najeeba learns sorcery, but a) she was already a magician, and b) it all just sort of happens and she tells us it did. In a sense, we see the learning experience, but it's so opaque that it's hard to make sense of until she tells us the effect it apparently had. To make matters worse, she never accomplishes the one goal she set out for herself. Instead, a completely different and unheralded resolution worms its way in. I found the book boring, and was never invested in the characters. It's a short book, but even so, I was never eager to pick it up, feeling more that it was a chore I had to accomplish. It feels like the middle of a novel, but not an interesting one.
In a way, it's impressive that one book can me me reevaluate the author quite so much. But frankly, it's really only the Binti trilogy that drew me in, and the other Okorafor books I've read have been disappointing. I'm willing to class this one as bad, more because it's so muddled and flat than because there's anything egregious in it. I haven't read Who Fears Death, no longer want to, and am not interested to follow this backstory series any further. And that's from someone who hates to quit something they've started.
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.
