Death of the Author

Nnedi Okorafor
Completed 7/21/2025, Reviewed 7/21/2025
5 stars

This book took my breath away.  I was completely engrossed in it and almost cried at the end.  I’ve read quite a bit of Okorafor’s works:  Who Fears Death, the Binti series, and the Akata series.  They range from good to amazing.  This is one of the amazing ones.  It’s a novel within a novel.  It follows Zelu, a disabled Nigerian American in her journey as an author, and the robots and AIs after the end of humanity.  At first, I was disturbed by the main character’s self-destructive nature, but between her life and that of the characters in her book, I became totally immersed in both.  Not only is it a sort of meta-genre book, but it provides intense scrutiny of the writing and publishing industry and a hope for the triumph of art.  This book is on my awards watch-list for next year’s Hugos.

The book begins with Zelu’s failed life as a writer and adjunct professor.  From somewhere deep inside comes a science fiction novel called Rusted Robots.  It thrusts her into literary superstardom.  It causes inner conflict for her as well as major conflict for her mostly traditional Nigerian family.  They’ve always seen her as a failure compared to her parents’ and siblings’ careers.  And the Nigerian people look down on physical, mental, and emotional disabilities as something to be mocked and seen as a personal failure.  Very slowly, things change in Zelu’s life as she makes “selfish” choices which end up providing for her growth as an individual.  However, she fights with her own demons which are deeply engrained in her since the childhood accident that left her paraplegic.  

Interspersed with Zelu’s life is her monumental novel.  It is about the conflict between the Humes, robots modeled after humans, and the hive mind of AI, called NoBodies or Ghosts.  The Ghosts eschew everything reminiscent of humans, including the Humes.  The Humes are the opposite, especially in their love of stories and storytelling.  It features a Hume and a Ghost who are temporarily merged to help repair the Hume after most of them are destroyed at the command of the central AI.  

Also scattered throughout the book are interviews with important people in Zelu’s life.  This brings interesting perspectives into the background of Zelu and the family and cultural pressures she endures.

For quite far into the book, Zelu comes across as a tragic figure and as the reader, I felt hers would be a trainwreck of a life.  The only bright points were the chapters of Rusted Robots. Fortunately, Zelu grows throughout the book, but I kept on waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Her life appears to go from bad to worse as her newfound fame and familial disapproval practically destroys her.  The book ends with a massive twist I never saw coming.  

I loved every aspect of this book.  It has a huge number of characters, all of whom have a believable voice.  There is only one character who I wasn’t quite sure about.  There’s an altruistic billionaire with a program like SpaceX who contacts Zelu about being a passenger on his next launch.  He’s a little too altruistic, considering what we know about other billionaires.  He is more reminiscent of S.R. Haddon, the reclusive billionaire from “Contact” who only seems to want to do the right thing.  All the other characters, though, felt very real and multi-dimensional.

I also thought the prose was perfect, not too flowery, not too sparse.  The world building of both the Zelu and the robot stories was phenomenal.  And lastly, I thought the main Hume and Ghost characters were tremendous. Both were so almost-human, I empathized with both as much as with Zelu.  At times, it was reminiscent of the feel of “R.U.R.”, the first story (a play, actually) where the word “Robot” was used and questioning what it means to be human. 

I loved this book.  It had me on the edge of my seat wondering which way it was going to end for Zelu.  Then with the twist, my mind was blown.  Okorafor has really stepped up her game with this book.  I have read several books-within-books novels, but this one takes the cake.  I give it five stars out of five.