I recently read Nnedi Okorafor’s Desert Magicians duology. I had ordered her books because I thought they’d fit well into the post-apocalyptic fiction piece I’m writing for Aeon magazine, but realized once I got them that they were too far into the science fiction/fantasy (SFF) sphere to fit into my piece. Though her books are set several decades after an apocalypse, I was looking for more standard novels, specifically not people with special powers and talking animals. That said, I enjoyed the books immensely, particularly the fact that they’re set in the Global South, which I don’t read enough about. In Shadow Speaker, the first book of this duology (reissued from the original in 2007), Okorafor weaves an engaging story around her main character and the people and places she meets on her travels.
Shadow Speaker is set in 2070 in Niger, amongst the sifting sands of the Sahara, in a world where the apocalypse happened decades ago. Called ‘the Great Change,’ the apocalypse was caused by nuclear and Peace Bombs being dropped on Earth. The latter were “a weapon consisting of airborne biological agents meant to counteract the effects of nuclear missiles.” The idea of the Peace Bomb was that it would “1. Create where nuclear bombs destroyed, and 2. Cause so many ‘glorious’ mutations amongst humans…that no one would want to fight each other…Fights meant that sides had to be taken first. With so many differences there would be too many sides taken for any kind of fight.”
The Great Change was associated with earthquakes, tsunamis, and tornadoes. It also opened up gateways between places on Earth (for example, the main character can look through a hole in the universe and see New York), and between five different worlds. After the Great Change, it became dangerous for people to travel alone so they congregated in cities, only travelling the desert in groups. The biggest new world with which Earth was connected was Ginen, where everything—even buildings—is made out of plants. As a result of the merging of worlds, Niger cities took to solar power and internet. When she goes to Agabez in Niger, Ejii notes that “the city was a modern ancient metropolis.” It’s a strange juxtaposition: the chaos of an outdoor market with people walking, riding camels and motorbikes, but also people typing on or listening to their e-pals, which are kind of like a modern-day tablet.
Ejii (Ejimafor) Ugabe is a teenager in the town of Kwàmfà, the first daughter of a man who took several wives and called himself the town’s Chief. He was killed by the town’s queen, Sauraniya Jaa (The Red One), for being corrupt and self-aggrandizing. Ejii was nine when Jaa cut his head off (which was then eaten by a carnivorous plant). This has coloured her perception of Jaa throughout her childhood.
Ejii is a shadow speaker, one of the many types of ‘different’ people that were born after the peace bombs. She can see in the dark and has exceptional long distance vision, but also has shadows that collect around her and help her mentally ‘read’ people to see their past and what they’re thinking now. She’s still learning how to control her abilities, however, when she feels the urge to leave Kwàmfà and go on ‘walkabout,’ a feeling that shadow speakers have to give in to or they’ll go mad. Her goal is to meet up with Jaa and attend The Golden Dawn Meeting, a peace summit between Jaa, Ginen’s Chief Ette of Ooni, and the masters of four other worlds that now intersect with Earth. There isn’t much hope for a good outcome from the meeting, as Ette hates Earth people because of their pollution and contamination.
Ejii slowly learns through trial and error how to harness her own powers, stopping an Aejej, a sandstorm with a sentient being at the centre, by using her powers to suggest it find peace to calm its raging activity: “Sometimes, peace is not something that just comes. Sometimes you have to actively search for it.” She befriends a colony of sandcats, who usually eat humans but are mollified by Ejii having a scar from a sandcat she met on the only day she went into the desert alone outside of Kwàmfà. She can ‘talk’ to them because of her shadow speaker skills. The longer she travels, the more she tests out her powers, until she faces the biggest test of all: dying. As a shadow speaker, she becomes one with the universe, “she joined the Whole, connecting with billions of other winds, waters, lands, and spaces. The Whole was undying, young, old, ancient, constant.” But she manages to come back to life. “She’d died. And now she knew so much. She had passed the shadow speaker’s greatest test, she now understood.”
This is definitely a feminist book. At the start of the novel, Ejii feels naked without her burka, which she had to wear under her father’s rule, but not Jaa’s. Though she comes to enjoy being free of it, she finds that wearing a burka means that she gets fewer assessing looks from men, which makes her feel safer. She defers to her two male friends—her mother tells her, “I see you with Sammy and Arif. They’re your friends, yet you walk behind them, you ask them what you should instead of deciding for yourself, you lower your voice.” Even Arif says, “Ejii, if you don’t learn how to lead, you’ll only be led.” When she meets Dikéogu, a rainmaker who doesn’t know his own powers, she invites him to travel with her. But she still struggles with making decisions. ““I shouldn’t be making all the decisions,” she says. She didn’t know many boys who liked to be led. It’s not right for me to lead, she caught herself thinking.” Ejii’s a smart and tough teenager, but she’s still caught in the mores of her father, who considered women inferior to men. Even when she meets the Desert Magician, who controls access to the different worlds, she defers to him. “Wah, wah. I know you’re a girl, but get some balls,” says the Magician. “Stand up tall and say ‘Give it to me or I’ll kill you with my bare hands!’” By the end of the book, Ejii has come into her powers and no longer feels secondary to men.
Then there’s the character of Jaa, a small woman with a big personality. She has two husbands, Buji and Gambo, but she is in charge of their family. She chafes at expected gender norms, like having to bow to Buji’s parents when they meet. She believes women should be able to look after themselves, and when she’s reminded of old customs by a group of ghosts, she says “I have to keep reminding them that things have evolved…women are still women, but we are also many other things.”
I enjoyed Okorafor’s worldbuilding and the unique and fiery characters she’s created – I can see why she’s won Hugo, Nebula, and other awards for her work. It was a pleasure to read something so far out of my usual reading fare. I had to read it twice to get all the nuance, as there were so many new things for me to process. I won’t give away the ending, but I was disappointed that the scene at the end wasn’t picked up in the second book in the duology, as there was definitely something there to tell.
I enjoyed her science fiction book Noor and the fantasy Akata Witch, although she didn’t like the comic I posted about it on Twitter.
Uh oh, how did you know she didn’t like the comic?