I thought this book was great, and I love any opportunity to experience fantasy or sci-fi from outside of a white, Euro-centric lens because until fairly recently I’ve not really known where to look for them. Description When a massive object crashes into the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous and legendary city, three people wandering along Bar Beach (Adaora, the marine biologist- Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa- Agu, the troubled. Lagoon is not a long book, but relative to its length, it is packed to overflowing with symbolism, evocative language, and valuable lessons about the ways we react to people who are different than us.Ĥ.8 out of 5 items of rating (I knoI don’t even care. It also reminds me of Butler’s Wild Seed a bit in the ways that Okorafor has intermingled human and animal in Ayodele (humanoid to monkey), and Adaora’s brief transformation from human to mermaid, but also in the way that we are able to briefly see the world as the altered swordfish.

It is sort of reminiscent of Octavia Butler to me (which I consider extremely high praise, and hope that you do too) in the way that she combines elements of hard sci-fi (aliens, spacecrafts, alien technology) with elements of African mythos and more traditionally fantasy-oriented things like magic. I love the more feminist approach to science fiction that Okorafor has settled upon in this story. A young disabled Igbo woman named Anwuli Okwudili, who goes by the codename AO (Autobionic Organism 4 ), lives in a futuristic Nigeria, where advanced technology has enabled her to upgrade unformed or weakened body parts with cybernetic prosthetics created by the megacorporation Ultimate Corp.

Lagoon nnedi okorafor characters