The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.  As you’re doing your Amazon shopping, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d use our affiliate link to do so as it helps pay the bills around here!

Dear readers, we have reached that point in our Virtual Book Club experience.  The point of “will they finish in time?”  Here’s hoping for yes, but you have to sign up here and virtually show up on Friday, October 21, 2022 at 7:30pm Central to find out.  It’s also suggested you read The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman and come with festive attire and beverages, but you do you darlings, and we’ll get as far as we can with these ding dang dead trees we’re reading.  

There’s always a spider in YA fantasy books, I’m convinced.  I said it about the two books that come before this one, and I say it again now.  In Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorafor, we rejoin Sunny, Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha on another adventure, this one prompted by, you guessed it, a giant spider.  Or, more accurately, a spirit / god who’s presenting itself as a giant spider.  *Cringe*  As one who’s read Akata Witch and Akata Warrior might imagine, Akata Witch opens with our group starting to test for the next level as Leopard People, and a new, challenging hero’s journey to provide the adventure for our plot.  

I thought Akata Woman would be a few years down the line and feature a more grown up version of our ensemble.  That really wasn’t it though, and, as the author’s note says, the world of the Leopard People just wasn’t done with Okorafor yet, and I’m here for it.  We got another adventure, and learned more about our cast, the Nimm women, and Sunny’s family in the process.  I learned more about Nigerian history, and spoiler alert, the book ends as the pandemic is beginning.  

I’m giving Akata Woman four emphatic stars because it’s a well written, gorgeously plotted, picturesque, fun hang of a book featuring a fantastic ensemble cast of magical young people.  It was a window into their lives, and recent history, and I highly recommend it to others, but please do read these amazing books in order, as it’ll just make more sense that way.  

What’s a really fun, beautifully written novel that’s also taught you a thing or two?

~Nikki

Back in October of 2020, when we did our first ever month dedicated to witches, we read what we then thought was a duology by Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy award winning author Nnedi Okorafor. I am so excited that Dr. Okorafor (if you remember from all the way two years ago, Okorafor has a PhD in literature) settled in to write about these four young people on the verge of adulthood during the lock-downs of 2020. Now collectively called The Nsibidi Scripts, these books follow four young and magically powerful teenagers through their formative childhood years. Please remember that even though she has titled the books with the word Akata, it is a slur that means “bush animal” that would be used to describe Black Americans or or other foreign-born blacks. Sunny and Chichi discuss how much Sunny hates the term, but in a jovial way that only best friends can call each other derogatory terms, and in so doing reclaim them.

What I really noticed in this third book was that even though the four main characters are still very much a cohesive, powerful Oha coven, they have each grown into their own differing powers. Sasha, Orlu, Chichi, and Sunny each depend upon the others’ skills to enhance their own, and upon occasion to save the entire group from getting into even bigger trouble. It’s a way for each of them to take responsibility for perhaps not only for themselves, but for the whole coven. Each character also has to come to terms with their places in the world, as members of their respective families no matter that family’s past, as well as citizens of the world and as Leopard People. I really loved how we as readers see this journey that they are on individually and how it strengthens their bonds so that they can go on this epic quest to ‘save the world.’

One of my favorite quotations from Akata Woman, a solid four star read for me, too, was this from near the end when the coven is receiving their magical rewards that fall from the sky: “The bruise was already a deep red. Sugar Cream had said there was always a consequence for holding [time still] for an extended period of time, but Sunny would never have imagined the consequence would be so . . . petty.” And isn’t that usually the way with life, it never goes as we expected it and it can sometimes surprise you with the consequences.

Here’s to the rest of witchy month being filled with only pleasant consequences.

~Ashley

PLEASE SUPPORT US WHEN YOU SHOP BY FIRST CLICKING ON THE IMAGES BELOW: