Ahoy there me mateys! I received this sci-fi eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. So here be me honest musings . . . If you tell us something happened in the past, we get it. We don't have to have the chapter written in italics to suddenly understand this happened prior to the rest of the story. Please stop treating readers as though we can't get something that basic. And how does this translate to audio? Does the narrator suddenly start talking with her nose pinched shut? Just stop with the italics already. Anwuli Okwudili has always been made to feel like she doesn’t belong. In the eyes of society, there’s too much about her that’s machine-powered, and consequently, not organic. So when she retaliates against a group of men who assaulted her, she accidentally ends up killing them, giving the government the perfect reason to hunt her down. Simultaneously, Noor's distinguished abilities, supernatural in nature, are still so realistic and believable. The reader is compelled to unravel the mystery of her deeper than usual insight into the life of her family members through their past, present and future.

a b Murad, Mahvesh (November 16, 2021). "A Familiar-Looking Future: Noor By Nnedi Okorafor". Tor.com . Retrieved February 27, 2022. On a dozing afternoon when the winter is merging into the long lasting summer of my land, I have finished reading Noor. Russia has invaded Ukraine the previous day and my soil is free, once which was deep red. On Okorafor's birthday, she released a teaser photo of a completed manuscript for Noor which she had sent to her editor at DAW Books. [7] In an interview with Bustle, she said that she had those who identify themselves as cyborgs in mind while writing Noor, and that the book is expected to promote people with disabilities in the speculative fiction scene. [2] Themes [ edit ] I may have been fifty percent machine, but I had the emotional range of a healthy empathetic human being. And so recounting all that led me to that moment in the desert crushed me again.On the fourth day he felt like a mercenary.....In the end he'd fought and killed for an unremarkable reason : to save himself.' This is the second book I've read by this author and I doubt I'll read any more. There's just no substance. At least there was cool tech in this one, but again, if it's not explained how such things might work, then it's not believable. This is the first work I read by Nnedi Okorafor. The story is set in a futuristic Nigeria, and the future envisioned by Okorafor is a realistic one I can see happening quite easily. The main themes covered in this work are how foreign powers encroach upon the local resources of less wealthy countries, desecrating the nation in the process while swelling their bank accounts. The organization that is the main power here, Ultimate Corp, sells its products for a price cheaper than the Nigerian market itself, and the citizens themselves feed into an organization that does harm to their country, because the momentary comforts their products give are effective tranquilizers. The theme explored here is a powerful one, and I enjoyed reading it. Anwuli Okwudili prefers to be called AO. To her, these initials have always stood for Artificial Organism. AO has never really felt...natural, and that's putting it lightly. Her parents spent most of the days before she was born praying for her peaceful passing because even in-utero she was wrong. But she lived. Then came the car accident years later that disabled her even further. Yet instead of viewing her strange body the way the world views it, as freakish, unnatural, even the work of the devil, AO embraces all that she is: A woman with a ton of major and necessary body augmentations. And then one day she goes to her local market and everything goes wrong. I have mixed feelings about Noor. I loved the world-building to bits! Okorafor did such a fantastic job developing everything about AO's augmentations and how they worked as well as the presence Ultimate Corp throughout and their influence over everything and everyone. The social commentary regarding that was excellent and I loved how it was done and all of the twists exposing who they really were and what they were capable of.

She teams up with a Fulani herdsname calling himself “DNA” who is wrongfully accused of terrorism but only wants to protect his last two remaining cows. He knows a lot about the devastating huge cyclone called “Red Eye” in the desert where they hope to find a safe haven. The Islamic nation is strong and enduring, and the victory for Muslims is coming, even if it's after 500 years when the reasons for victory materialize. This sci-fi novel marks my foray into Afrofuturism, and I’m glad it is helmed by a character as adamant and outspoken as AO. One of the main reasons I was engrossed right from the get-go is how straightforward AO’s demeanour (and subsequently, her voice) is. Though there is a not-very-detailed but exceedingly corny sex scene, it reads like a YA novel and the protagonist comes across as a teenager instead of a young woman. (Excerpt from sex scene: "I slightly lengthened my legs, so that he could meet me with perfect sweetness". Really? "With perfect sweetness"???? 🤦‍♀️)The big bad is a global biotech company with fingers in many places. We follow AO on a journey of sorts after her engagement is broken off. A lot of seemingly random things occur, but a lot of it does come together at the end, even if it takes awhile to get there. One element I found entertaining is the subversion of the "magical negro" trope by instead having this mystical white man appear and offer the main characters wisdom on their journey. And also marijuana. Setting a white character as the exotic other in this way is an interesting choice. The novel follows her journey on the run and the truths she discovers. I really loved AO as a character. The pain she suffered, her self-will, and her ability not to see the world through the lens of hatred were admirable. I love both her body positivity and her realistic viewpoints on human behavior and prejudice. Not that I wish people weren't so horrible of course. This novel doesn't shy from the selfish things folks do out of ignorance or selfishness or fear. But there is good in humanity as well. I also loved the herdsman DNA and his two awesome cows. AO is such a great character. She’s always felt like an outsider because of her body modifications, but she loves the way she looks and feels, so she tries to ignore the stares and taunts. I love this exploration of body positivity with a science fiction spin, it was so well done. The only thing that seems to set her off is when people say things like “What kind of woman are you?” They see her as more robot than human, and she hates that because she’s still human in the ways that count. AO has also suffered years of living with intense pain while her body adjusted to her cybernetic limbs, and she’s become stronger because of it. Okorafor has a gift for inner dialogue; her protagonist’s reaction to herself and her environment inspires the reader’s sense of being there.

As a fan of Nnedi Okorafor, I was very excited to get a chance to read her latest work of science-fiction, Noor. We meet AO, who goes by the initials of her given name as well as the moniker she’s adopted for herself, Artifical Organism, as she’s shopping in a Nigerian market. After a bloody run-in turns her into a target then a fugitive, AO flees her home for the desert in hopes of avoiding capture. There she meets a lone herdsman and his two cows, before deciding to embark into the Red Eye together. To make Noor Library the largest Arab community for those interested in reading, writing, authoring, marketing, selling and distributing Arabic electronic and paper books. Yesterday I watched 'Judgement at Nuremberg' in which they had covered the trials of the judges who were working under Nazi regime. In these days, I'm also reading The Great partition by Yasmin Khan, in which she has presented the popular point of view about the partition of 1947. And I just finished Noor, a novel of a military man, Ali who went to Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) to fight in the war against "his own people", and his adopted daughter, Sajida, who lost her Bangladeshi family in the genocide of 1971, and Ali's granddaughter Noor who is a differently abled girl and has exceptional skills of painting.

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Great storytelling; great science fiction; great interpersonal relationships. The reader’s story starts when it does for AO. The development is well foreshadowed without being too obvious. The climax is simultaneously a surprise and inevitable. Good job. The story building was seamless. The details here and there would form a grin on my face. Like, the seven up bottles, S-i-n-g-e-r sewing machine (it is still printed like this today!), ordinary life of a Pakistani family, of a Pakistani woman- all these are crafted with accuracy you wouldn’t find much in English books. You can almost picture the household, hear the Urdu words falling from their mouths. And the accurate details of then East Pakistan and now Bangladesh left wider grins on my face. This invention interweaves beautifully with the narrative in a way that closed the circle the Noor's inception started by the ending. (No spoilers!) Moreover, sunlight in general stands in for transparency and the exposure of immoral actions and dealings, but also, I think, spiritual wellbeing. As in seeing one's flaws and coming to accept and embrace them as part of the whole.