Ms. Hen reviews Noor

 

Noor

Nnedi Okofafor

Daw Books, Inc

2021

Ms. Hen decided to read this because she read about it in an article about science fiction for the holidays, so she decided to get it from her library. When she went to pick up the book, the library was closed for an election, but she went back on a day she did not have to go to the city to retrieve this book. She thinks it was worth the extra trip.

This novel is Africanfuturist, or science fiction about Africans or African Americans. Ms. Hen does not remember reading another book like this before. 

This is about a woman who calls herself AO, or Artificial Organism, who is mostly robotic. She was deformed when she was born, but her parents decided to have her augmented. When she was fourteen, she was in a car accident, and was injured further. She has two artificial legs, an artificial arm, lung, and neural implants.

The novel starts when AO is in the market in her town in Nigeria, buying items to make soup because she's depressed her boyfriend broke up with her. A man comes up to her and says, "What kind of woman are you?" And she goes berserk and kills the men around her. She leaves the city because she is afraid.

She meets a herdsman in the north named DNA who tells her a story of how part of his tribe was killed. They travel together to find out what happened. A company named Ultimate Corp, which Ms. Hen thinks is similar to another company that's around that starts with an "A", controls all of the commerce in Africa and beyond. AO finds out the secret of her origins and is angry. She finds she has power that she doesn't know she has.

This novel is many faceted. It's a female power novel, about a woman who has been wronged, but finds she has the strength to take control of her life. It's also about the prejudice against a woman who is mostly machine. AO can't help what she is, but people are afraid of her. It's also a love story, and about dysfunctional families. Mostly, it's an adventure tale.

This novel reminds Ms. Hen of THE ODYSSEY by Homer in the way that it's about a quest to find a place in the world. It's also similar to THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ because it's about traveling on a journey, and finding friends, and discovering a peaceful place in the middle of a maelstrom.

There are some chickens in this novel, which doesn't surprise Ms. Hen, because chickens spice everything up. There's a part when AO mentions hens, "Something similar happened again with hens last year. I'd been walking home with two friends, and we'd cut through someone's yard. There were five chickens there and they'd blocked my way to the point that my friends both started laughing." The hens knew that AO was special.

Ms. Hen thinks this is an important novel, and one that everyone should read, but she doesn't think that it is everyone's cup of tea. It's about a company that dominates commerce, and ruling people's lives, and one woman who suffers the consequences. It's also about taking power over your own life, and finding personal strength which is what AO does.