I really loved this, and I think it's my favourite of Okorafor's that I've read so far, even surpassing Who Fears Death, which was outstanding but a little too violent for my tastes. I don't even want to give the library copy of Shadow Speaker back, which means I'll have to buy one of my own...

I think what attracts me most to this is the imagery. In a way it reminds me of Meredith Ann Pierce's Darkangel trilogy. Not because of any similarity of setting or subject matter, because there is none, but because both Okorafor and Pierce built these worlds bursting with colour and magic. In each, the pages are just stuffed with strangeness and wonder and I think that's what really appeals to me: the sense of wonder. Usually that's something I get from science or science fiction rather than fantasy, but every so often I read a fantasy that becomes so technicolour, if that makes sense, that it seems to billow out of the black and white world of print and I'm left delighted and amazed at the pictures these worlds form in my imagination. And, you know, the story here is appealing too. I will never not like books about young women who abandon the expectations other people have for them in order to experience something larger, or something more idealistic. In this case it's stopping a war, and that's done at least in part, but the vividness of the worlds traveled through makes Ejii's journey far more wonder-full than the norm.