Book: Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor

by evie 

Summary (spoilers lol)

        Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor is the sequel to Akata Witch and the second book in the Nsibidi scripts series. A lot of different things happened in this book, so I'm going to try to explain them the best that I can. Quick intro to the characters: Sunny Nwazue, the main character and newly adapted free agent to the Leopard world (a magical secret group of people from all around the world), Sugar Cream, a powerful Leopard lady who is also Sunny's mentor, Chichi, Sasha, and Orlu, Sunny's friends and fellow Leopard kids. Her brothers are also part of the story but to be honest they don't do much other than get in trouble. 

        At the beginning of the book, Sunny is almost killed by a lake beast octopus thing and is saved by a water deity. She has also been having these prophetic nightmares about heading to a smoking city (more on that later). Her brother goes off to college and then later secretly returns home and tells Sunny about a gang problem he has at school. She takes care of it, with the help of Chichi, but gets in trouble with Sugar Cream. As punishment, Sunny is thrown into a basement with a djinn, who almost kills her but she gets saved by some spiders. 

        Almost immediately after that, she has an encounter with Ekwensu (main antagonist spirit evil thing) who splits her in HALF (there's this this called a spirit face that Leopard people have, and Sunny gets separated from hers which is really bad). Sunny goes to a priestess, Bola Yusef, who tells her to find a giant spider (Udide) who can weave them a flying grasscutter and take them to Osisi (the smoking city she was traveling to in her future-prophecy dreams yep). So then she plays soccer with her now-split spirit self and feels better. Anyway, Sunny's group decides that they'll travel to where Udide is during the new year to try to get to Osisi. So they go on a road trip, almost die a few times, et cetera. Eventually they find Udide (the really big spider)'s cave and (surprise) she immediately tries to kill them. Sunny convinces her to spare them by telling Udide a story, and then Udide weaves the flying grasscutter (its like a gopher that eats grass but this one's really big and can fly). 

        They hop on and begin the journey to Osisi (Sunny almost gets murdered by another lake beast and sees Death himself) and then get there. They find the house (Sunny has a letter from her dead grandmother written in a magical language that told her about this house that she needs to go to) and break in. After exploring a bit, they get attacked by a masquerade that Chichi summoned a year ago (in the first book) and then Sunny comes face-to-face with Ekwensu, again. She fights her, and wins by pulling her mask off. Sunny passes out after hitting the ground and meets with Chukwu (literally the supreme being/GOD) and her separate-spirit-face-self. They have a snack together (kola nut) and Chukwu pokes her in the head which brings her back to reality in Osisi. The group then leaves together and flies back to the place where they were staying (a city called Lagos, and her brother + his friend were there too). 

        All of them get in the car and take a road trip back home. Right after the Leopard kids get back, they're taken to trial in front of the Library Council because saving the world again is against the rules (not really but that's basically what they're in trouble for). After being proved innocent, they go home and then to a festival a month later. The end. I'm sorry the summary is so horrible but it's so hard to sum up a 490-page book in one post, and like I said an insane amount of stuff happens so like yeah go read it yourself.

Opinion

        Okay so, I liked this book a lot (not as much as the first one, but still a lot). The characters didn't lose the 3-dimension-ness that they had in the first book and you can tell that Sunny's grown because she's not as scared and confused anymore. 

        My only problem is one that I also had with the first book: The final Ekwensu fight scene. I feel like there's so much buildup to it and then it ends in an instant. In the first book, Sunny defeats Ekwensu by telling her to go away. Like, it didn't last a page. The final fight got better in this book, being about 7 pages long, but it still a bit felt glossed over. Everything with Ekwensu, the terrifying evil spirit who's been the main problem for the past two books, got completely wrapped up in seven pages. This book is 490 pages long, maybe some of it could go to a fight scene that was a little longer?? I don't know.

        Overall, this book is pretty cool. I recommend it by itself, but if you can, read the first novel (Akata Witch) before this one because it introduces everything and makes Akata Warrior make a bit more sense.

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