Spellbinding .. Okorafor pulls us so deeply into Zelu’s innermost workings that her wins and losses feel like our own even if we don’t fully agree with her choices ... While thoroughly imaginative, these excerpts sometimes feel weighed down by world-building, and they lack the subtleties of Zelu’s more grounded, fluid world. But they are essential to the novel’s most prominent concern: the nebulous link between artists and their art. With one final, surprising reveal, Okorafor cleverly subverts the very nature of this link, and we are left reconsidering everything we’ve just read. The effect is as delicious as it is disorienting.
Okorafor has a lot to offer outside its story-within-a-story structure ... There’s rising action that builds but no release. But by the end, the explosion I felt like I was promised became a balloon leaking air. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it left me pawing at the back of the book, wondering if I had flipped past the final chapter.
I don’t think Okorafor’s approach really works ... The characters in the story-within-a-story have too little room to develop and the plotting often feels phoned in ... Ultimately, there is much to love here: the spiky feminism; the warm but also critical treatment of Nigerian culture; the thorny, eccentric, lovable main character. For the many fans of Okorafor, this will probably be more than enough. But, in stepping outside SF, I felt that Okorafor lost her instinct for what makes a compelling story.
