Nnedi Okorafor’s SHE WHO KNOWS is a short prequel to Who Fears Death? telling the backstory of one of the supporting characters. The protagonist is a woman from a salt-dealing culture, nudged by inexplicable impulses to push against her gender role; the results make her family and their community rich but inevitably brings trouble as well. Coming-of-age stories don’t work for me but Okorafor pulled this one off. I found the ending too abrupt, though; possibly it would have worked better if I’d read Who Fears Death more recently than 2011 (it’s also setting up for a V2).
My friend Ross bought me BOMBSHELLS: The Death of Illusion by Marguerite Bennett and multiple artist as a birthday present, so I’m finally back in Bennett’s alt.WW II where the superheroes are all women. In this collection everyone from Zatanna and Raven to Poison Ivy, Lois Lane and Supergirl is slowly drawn to the brutal siege of Leningrad, but can they help its people? And what about Hugo Strange and his mad plan to breed a super-race to take over from humanity? As always, a fun series with interesting takes on DC characters.
WE ARE WATCHING by Alison Gaylin has a recently widowed bookstore-owner increasingly unnerved by the way people seem to be watching her and her daughter, and chatting about them online. Still, her paranoid pothead father, an aging rocker, has to be imagining it when he claims they’re all the targets of a vast conspiracy that tried to kill him just like they did JFK — right?
He is not, of course, imagining it.
This is a thriller for the age of Qanon and Pizzagate (there’s a reference to characters searching for a secret room in the bookstore where the human sacrifices are carried out), a conspiracy born online and formed by connecting up dots that don’t exist, which is enough to drive people to kill or die for it. I don’t quite buy it could stay this tight and obsessive for two decades but it’s still an excellent book.
Covers by Ant Lucia and Marguerite Sauvage (bottom). All rights to images remain with current holders.
