This may be unfair, because this is only the second book I’ve read by Okorafor (I’m counting the Binti series as a single book), but I am beginning to see a pattern: 1) she comes up with really cool ideas and characters, and then 2) writes a frankly incoherent and rambling story around them. Born malformed and then further injured in an accident, narrator AO defies social norms by repairing and augmenting herself with mechanical parts. AO lives in a futuristic Africa which has harnessed the punishing effects of climate change (scorching sun, blistering windstorms) to generate solar and wind power. From that foundation, we devolve into an illogical and disjointed tale that unsuccessfully mixes together cool concepts such as an evil megacorporation, nomadic herdsmen in the age of technology, an entire hidden city of technocrat rebels, manipulation of crowds through social media and superstition, and the cherry on top: a rather abrupt love story between two characters with no chemistry and nothing in common. Quite a letdown, really.
Thinking about this later, I remembered that Okorafor also wrote The Nsibidi Scripts series (Akata Witch / Akata Warrior), in which the characters are well-rounded and believable and the plots are straightforward and logical; she’s clearly capable of churning out a solid story. Maybe she just needed a better editor for Noor.