Coming Home to Find a Way Forward - A Review of Akata Warrior

Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I have mentioned often enough that my faith in young adult fiction is not as solid as it used to be - certainly not like it was when I first started reading in the genre in the very late 1990s and early 2000s. One would think that, given the sheer amount of YA now available, I would be able to find at least some reads that I would find enjoyable, but despite the seeming embarrassment of riches the YA shelf of my bookstore now provides, quantity does not always mean quality. YA used to be a rather small genre, but almost all the books were excellent - what I did not like was generally down to personal taste, and not so much the quality of the writing. But nowadays, finding good YA stories is like trying to find a few grains of gold in a very great quantity of dross, and I just do not have the time to do that kind of sifting.

Fortunately, the Internet has been (relatively) helpful in pinning down interesting YA novels to read, though it still does require some filtering and sifting to find material that might be good to read. In general, however, I filter according to books by authors of tried-and-tested repute (such as the inimitable Diane Duane), and, increasingly, books by people of colour. I notice that it is among the latter that I am finding the kind of quality storytelling that used to exist in YA. Not all of those stories are to my taste, of course, but I find that the ones that are, are incredible, amazing stories, or at the very least immensely entertaining - which is more than I can say for a great many of the other YA stories written by white authors.

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