Death of the Author - SFBA Book Club

Flauschbuch reviewed Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

Strange, thought-provoking tale

5 stars

Two books rolled into one and then, a third book plays a decisive role. I loved the poetic excerpts from "Rusted Robots" and its reflections about friendship and enemies, how immediate existing conflicts keep the robots from fighting an existential threat in an echo of what happened to humanity. The main framing story takes place in the near future and sometimes appears a bit meandering but I felt contained a lot of observations about storytelling and family relationships. There's a big twist towards the end which give the whole book another meta layer. I plan to re-read it at some point.

loppear reviewed Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

Didn't love much about this.

2 stars

Strong potential in near future Nigerian/American family tensions of over fame and disability, Chicago and African settings, interwoven with a further out robot society facing human-like challenges of witnessing cataclysm. And large parts, especially the more painful, feel like and are author-memoir. So disappointing to dislike most of the characters and their overall arcs, through accident and levels of seeking independence.

Pretty Greene Leaves 🌿 reviewed Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

None

5 stars

This was a really interesting book, and I think it's one where I kinda blame the blurb for messing up my reading of it. The basic premise is that a Nigerian-American woman, down on her luck, writes a book about robots in a post human future that ends up becoming a huge international success (not a spoiler, literally part of the blurb). But then the blurb says "something strange begins to happen", which made me expect something supernatural or magical realism-ish to happen, and I kept expecting, and kept expecting, but it didn't come. Because that's not really the type of book this is. It's really just a book about this woman's experience of life and family, and navigating the world with a disability. It is a beautiful book. I love it, and I think I want to try listening to it again sometime later with this mentality. I won't …

This was a really interesting book, and I think it's one where I kinda blame the blurb for messing up my reading of it. The basic premise is that a Nigerian-American woman, down on her luck, writes a book about robots in a post human future that ends up becoming a huge international success (not a spoiler, literally part of the blurb). But then the blurb says "something strange begins to happen", which made me expect something supernatural or magical realism-ish to happen, and I kept expecting, and kept expecting, but it didn't come. Because that's not really the type of book this is. It's really just a book about this woman's experience of life and family, and navigating the world with a disability. It is a beautiful book. I love it, and I think I want to try listening to it again sometime later with this mentality. I won't spoil why the blurb thought those words were appropriate, it's truly best to put the book in your queue, forget why you put it there, and read it without the blurb. Buy the book and scribble over the blurb with sharpy.

kamen

rated it

Feb. 1, 2025