The daughter of Nigerian immigrants grows up to write a bestselling science-fiction novel about robots in a post-apocalyptic future.
The description I read for this book made it sound very autobiographical. The main character, Zelu, is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants growing up in Chicago… just like Nnedi Okorafor.
She’s paralyzed from the waist down thanks to a rotten tree branch.
Okorafor was also paralyzed after a back surgery gone wrong, although she was able to regain the use of her legs.
And, of course, Okorafor is a successful sci-fi writer, although I don’t think she’s written anything as successful as Rusted Robots, the novel that completely changes Zelu’s life.
Zelu is certainly the focus of this book, and I love her, even as I was sometimes frustrated by her. That’s how you know she’s very well written.
I cheered for her when things went her way, I was afraid for her during tense scenes, and I occasionally wanted to slap some sense into her.
But the synopsis doesn’t say anything about Rusted Robots, and while it does not get the majority of page time, I loved it.
Rusted Robots is the novel Zelu writes and sells for $1 million, and every few chapters, we get a chapter from Rusted Robots, which I loved.
I’m so glad I we get to see the end of Rusted Robots, and hoo-boy did that ending throw me for a loop! I’m not going to spoil it because it’s too good to spoil.
Zelu’s story covers everything from entitled students to the exploitative nature of higher education, to fame, ableism, and of course, family.
Zelu’s relationship with her family is complicated, to say the least. Of course, they love each other, but due to Zelu’s partial paralysis, her family tends to express their love by smothering her in the name of protection.
Towards the end her family does a 180 and accepts she’s going to do something super risky, which I just didn’t find believable.
I was also confused by Zelu’s reaction when her dad dies. It’s only after he’s gone that she claims he was the only one who ever supported her ambitions, even though we never saw him supporting her ambitions. It’s like she was mourning someone who never existed, and it made it hard for me to buy into any of it.
Despite my complicated feelings about this book, I couldn’t put it down. I spent more than a few nights staying up way too late reading this because it completely sucked me in.
And that ending was such a mind fuck!