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Lagoon - Nnedi Okorafor

Lagoon



I loved this book. Like, I fell in love with it. If I could, I would probably marry it. I think that Nnedi Okorafor is an immensely talented author with a real talent for world building. Her description of Lagos makes me feel like I have seen it, although I most definitely have not. And her descriptions of the creatures and landscape of the lagoon at Bar Beach are so beautifully rendered that my mind was working overtime trying to picture each altered bit of life.

Although I found myself strongly interested in each named character, the amount of respect that I felt for both Ayodele and Adaora was transcendent. Ayodele was so regal and wise, and Adaora so strong and brilliant that I felt my feminist-self shed a few tears a la my responses to the thigh jiggle in Wonder Woman (why does that have to be the thing that does me in??? In a movie about strong women, I am so much more concerned about the fact that a fit woman's body was allowed a momentary filmic jiggle for the whole world to see...) or every single word of Kelly Sue DeConnick's Bitch Planet.

I love the more feminist approach to science fiction that Okorafor has settled upon in this story. 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. 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.

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.

4.8 out of 5 items of rating (I knowwww that .8 is so arbitrary! But alas, I'm hesitant to say it was perfect, because that scares me). I don't even care. 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 they've been pretty few and far between (at least that I've found). 

What do you think? Have you read this book? Did you love it, hate it, or something in between?

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