Review: The Book of Phoenix

The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved Nnedi Okorafor's "Who Fears Death," which I read earlier this year, and immediately after finishing it I wanted to know more about the world. Luckily, I didn't have to wait too long, as this prequel was just released less than a month ago! Overall, I enjoyed the story and the writing, as I expected to, but feel it felt a little short of the first book - although I worry that I'm a little biased and didn't give this book enough credit by constantly comparing it to its companion.

The world of "Who Fears Death" was a richly and inventively magical world with hints and peaks of being a post-apocalyptic sci-fi world, which I thought was awesome. This story is the story of the Book repeatedly referenced throughout "Who Fears Death" and offers a little bit of the story of the world before the apocalypse, as well. It's also much more sci-fi than I expected.

The main character, Phoenix, is one of many experiments who live in the Towers. She lives in Tower 7, which is full of African people who have extraordinary powers or transformed bodies. She is 2 years old and fully grown and beginning to suspect that there's something a little weird about the fact that she lives in a tower where everyone is the subject of science experiments. She escapes, and everything changes from there.

It was hard to get used to the science in this science fiction, as it seems both too magical to be sci-fi and not magical enough to be the same world as "Who Fears Death," but once I was able to suspend my disbelief it read beautifully. I thought that the book went too quickly, in general, and I got more telling than showing on Phoenix's character growth. I feel it skirted over some of the more interesting aspects of the story - both Phoenix's story and the story of how Onyesonwu's world came to be. Phoenix's growth from a sheltered woman-child to a revolutionized fighter happens very quickly and conveniently, though after what feels like an introductory section the pacing corrects itself (again, leaving behind some of the more interesting storylines, like the true nature of the giant tree that grew through Phoenix's home and its gift to Phoenix). It often felt as though I was seeing a lot of cool, intriguing world-building elements, but not really engaging with them. I might even go so far as to say that this story was undecided on whether it was about Phoenix or about its world, and never dove satisfyingly deep into either.

I love Phoenix, though, and her companions - Mmuo, a man who taught himself to walk through walls; an immortal man with wings like Phoenix's; and her lover, Saeed, whose favorite food is crushed glass but will die if he eats more typically palatable food. I also very much enjoyed how Okorafor tied this world to one that appeared in one of her short stories, where near-intelligent (or perhaps fully intelligent) spider-shaped machines patrol the oil pipelines of Africa, and delighted in how she included it: according to the lore of the novel, the spiders were inspired by such a short story. The language is beautiful, and the edition I read included some gorgeous illustrations to accompany it (which I wish could have been full-page and full-color!).

Then, there was the end, or rather the bookend. For we are hearing Phoenix's story alongside a man who lives between the times of Phoenix and Onyesonwu. The apocalypse has come and gone and left hordes of still-functional electronics hidden in caves (why? we still don't know, and I hope we find out). He accesses one device and Phoenix's story is one of perhaps hundreds on that device, and after hearing it he writes it down and it becomes the Book of Onyesonwu's world. But he heavily editorializes, as he still believes in the inferiority of the Okeke people and rewrites the story to reflect that, and so we still don't know exactly what the Book that is familiar to Onyesonwu really is. I was initially frustrated because of all these loose ends, but now I'm just hopeful that we'll eventually get more meat to put on this interesting skeleton of a world.

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