Zahrah the Windseeker
Oct. 8th, 2009 07:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatI'm not a big fan of Young Adult literature, I'm not entirely sure why, especially given that many people have told me that some of the best fantasy being written at the moment is being written in the YA niche. I think it may be that I'm really just not so interested in teenage rites of passage and those seem to be pretty central to the genre. So it has to be a pretty exceptional YA book to really grab me. I'd say that Zahrah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu almost managed, but in the end it was a little too much of a travelogue, and not quite enough of a coherent story to pull me in.
I think I first heard of Zahrah the Windseeker when I stumbled across Okorafor-Mbachu's blog post about winning the Wole Soyinka prize for Literature in Africa. I was taken both by the idea that this was probably a good piece of YA fantasy lit and, I confess, by curiosity about what a fantasy world that "defaulted to black" rather than to white might look like.
It is the story of Zahrah who is born with dada-locks, vines growing in her hair. These mark her out as wise and talented, but also as an object of fear and ridicule. When she enters puberty she discovers she is also a Windseeker and has the ability to fly. The story primarily follows her adventures as she journeys into the Forbidden Greeny Jungle in search of a cure for her best friend who has been bitten by a War Serpent. I have been known to criticise a fair chunk of Andre Norton's output on the grounds that it is largely a travelogue, in which of our heros encounter one strange creature, or other weird threat, after another and then escape and it must be said my heart sank a bit as Zahrah set off into the Forbidden Greeny Jungle armed only with the Forbidden Greeny Jungle Field Guide and its list of weird creatures and other threats and how to escape them. Fortunately, in the event, the actual travelogue bits only took up a few chapters and the story fairly rapidly gets back on track with incidents that actually further the central plot and themes.
So, I wasn't so grabbed by the actual plot of the book. I also found Zahrah herself to be a bit over-written. Again this may just be a symptom of my lack of interest in teenage rites of passage. She is highly self-analytical and we get to hear in detail exactly why she is doing anything and what she thinks about it. In places I found that bounced me out of the fiction rather, the inside of Zahrah's head seemed altogether too self-aware but then, of course, teenagers often are highly self-analytical. I did like the world building though. Aside from the flying, which has no attempt at a justification, this is almost more a science fiction book than a fantasy book and describes a world in which technology is fundamentally biological in origin. Computers, buildings and cars are grown, metal is harvested from trees, the computer was invented before the automobile. It came across as a rich and fascinating world and there are hints of its links to our own that suggest maybe Okorafor-Mbachu has a sequel in mind. The descriptions of this world are vivid and engaging, as are most of the characters and the story itself, though straightforward, is well told.
I suspect this is a novel I would have loved in my early teens and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone who is fond of Andre Norton's style of writing.
I think I first heard of Zahrah the Windseeker when I stumbled across Okorafor-Mbachu's blog post about winning the Wole Soyinka prize for Literature in Africa. I was taken both by the idea that this was probably a good piece of YA fantasy lit and, I confess, by curiosity about what a fantasy world that "defaulted to black" rather than to white might look like.
It is the story of Zahrah who is born with dada-locks, vines growing in her hair. These mark her out as wise and talented, but also as an object of fear and ridicule. When she enters puberty she discovers she is also a Windseeker and has the ability to fly. The story primarily follows her adventures as she journeys into the Forbidden Greeny Jungle in search of a cure for her best friend who has been bitten by a War Serpent. I have been known to criticise a fair chunk of Andre Norton's output on the grounds that it is largely a travelogue, in which of our heros encounter one strange creature, or other weird threat, after another and then escape and it must be said my heart sank a bit as Zahrah set off into the Forbidden Greeny Jungle armed only with the Forbidden Greeny Jungle Field Guide and its list of weird creatures and other threats and how to escape them. Fortunately, in the event, the actual travelogue bits only took up a few chapters and the story fairly rapidly gets back on track with incidents that actually further the central plot and themes.
So, I wasn't so grabbed by the actual plot of the book. I also found Zahrah herself to be a bit over-written. Again this may just be a symptom of my lack of interest in teenage rites of passage. She is highly self-analytical and we get to hear in detail exactly why she is doing anything and what she thinks about it. In places I found that bounced me out of the fiction rather, the inside of Zahrah's head seemed altogether too self-aware but then, of course, teenagers often are highly self-analytical. I did like the world building though. Aside from the flying, which has no attempt at a justification, this is almost more a science fiction book than a fantasy book and describes a world in which technology is fundamentally biological in origin. Computers, buildings and cars are grown, metal is harvested from trees, the computer was invented before the automobile. It came across as a rich and fascinating world and there are hints of its links to our own that suggest maybe Okorafor-Mbachu has a sequel in mind. The descriptions of this world are vivid and engaging, as are most of the characters and the story itself, though straightforward, is well told.
I suspect this is a novel I would have loved in my early teens and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone who is fond of Andre Norton's style of writing.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-09 09:22 pm (UTC)Actually, it didn't impress me greatly at the time, but now I think about it the setting and characters are more memorable and remain more complete in my mind than many other books.