I guess some of you may recall this book from a review a few months ago (Larry's, I think). I got my sister to buy this for me as a birthday present. In retrospect, I'm glad it took me this long to get it because the book isn't that good at all. About halfway through I seriously hated it. The beginning and the end are interesting, though.

The setting is a non-specific location in Africa in some alternate reality. There are computers and cell phones yet people still travel with camels and not all have electricity. Well, that doesn't sound very alternate, but it is.

The main problem for me in this book was the characters. They aren't very nice at all. The defining characteristic of the heroine is her impulsiveness which leads to, for example, her making all the residents of a town blind for generations to come. There's also this one scene where she basically berates her friend by telling her that she's stronger and more powerful and can tear her to pieces. And she's the good guy? Her sidekick is an arrogant misogynistic young man. They love each other. Not that the supporting characters are all that amiable either. I don't recall any of them even thanking the heroine for regrowing them their clitorises. Catty bitches, all of them.

The sex scenes between the heroine and the hero were annoying. That's so because there were so many of them and they offered so little. Why write sex scenes when they don't contribute to anything? There was no romance and there certainly was no smut. There was this, though: "I felt them [sperm] in me, swimming, wriggling". A delightful image.

I also felt that the basic conflict could have been better envisioned because it was pretty thin. Basically there are two "races", the Okeke and the Nuru. The Okeke are black, have wide noses and live in the east, the Nuru are a shade whiter, have straight noses and live in the west. The two groups fight each other. Sure, there's more to it than that, but it still seemed simplistic.


My first book by an African author (well, she's American, too, but this is an African book) and it was not a good choice. **/*****