Akata Witch (The Nsibidi Scripts, #1) in Beyond Reality

Jun 18, 2012 Sarah rated it really liked it

Shelves: young-adult, fantasy

This is a lovely YA novel. It contains some similarities to the author's adult novel, Who Fears Death: a strong female protagonist who is just coming into her own power; a band of young friends who need to take on a larger evil; an African setting (far-future Sudan in that case, present day Nigeria in this one). If I remember correctly, both also begin with first-person sequences in which the protagonist gets a hint of her own power, and then segue into third-person for the remainder of the book ...more

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Aug 25, 2011 Wealhtheow rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy, ya, pocmaincharacters

Sunny has always been different. She's Nigerian, but was raised in America and has the pale coloring of an albino. And in adolescence, it turns out she's magic, as well. Although magic lets her play soccer in the sun and see wasps that create tiny fantastical scupltures, it also alerts her to grave danger. A magician named Black Hat is mutilating and sacrificing children, and only Sunny and her oha coven can stop him.

I like some components of this book much more than others. The background chara ...more

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Oct 18, 2017 Edward Butler rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book is like Harry Potter, only with magic far closer to the real thing, rooted in genuine traditions, as well as a charming window into middle class life in Nigeria, far from the famines and civil wars that tend to dominate the Western image of Africa. I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

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Dec 09, 2018 Kerry rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, 2018, 8-out-of-10, library, ya

This is a book I've been aware of for a long time, but never quite got around to adding it to the TBR. One of my Goodreads groups, that I haven't participated in for ages, has several books coming up that I would like to read, including this one. So I borrowed it from the library (I also borrowed the sequel, since it was sitting on the shelf beside this one).

This is a lovely book, mixing two different but unrelated coming of age/fish out of water stories, as Sunny has to find her place both in t ...more

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