Akata Witch

I picked up this YA book because it was being recommended as an alternative to Harry Potter, and indeed there are quite a few similarities in plot: tweenage protagonist suddenly discovers she's a magic-user, living in a world divided between leopards (wizards) and lambs (muggles) and bands up with plucky fellow students to save the world from the evil sorceror Black Hat Otokoto (Voldemort) who has ties in the past with protagonist's dead relatives. Oh and there's a magic bus ride and a magic village where only the wizards, sorry leopards, can visit and shop, and protagonist turns out to be exceptionally gifted at the sport that the kids are all obsessed with, etc....

All that aside though, it is very strongly based on African mythology and "juju" magic and definitely does not have the look and feel of the middle-class-English Harry Potter attending Hogwarts. The protagonist is Sunny, an albino American-Nigerian girl who is constantly teased for her odd appearance. She befriends Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha and the four of them try to balance "real world" and magic studies while hiding all this from Sunny's parents, who would definitely not approve. Each person's specific gifts of magic are rather more personalized than in Harry Potter, and often tied to what would be perceived as their flaws by "lambs", so Sunny turns out to be particularly naturally powerful in areas tied to her albinism, while the other three have different specialties.

There was an interesting element of almost video game-ishness also; as the kids gain experience in new types of magic they are literally showered with coins as a reward. It appears spontaneously from the air around them and has to be gathered up. This seems to be to leave this particular world extremely open to some very detailed questions about who or what exactly is determining this rewards and balancing amounts and so on.

I quite liked Sunny but not quite so much some of the other characters in the book, but I'll definitely pick up the next book in the series to see what happens next. (It has one sequel so far, but was not a cliff-hanger, first book had a satisfactory ending that could stop there.)

I'd had this book on my wishlist for quite some time. Binti became available at my library before Akata Witch did, and so I read that. After reading Binti, I added all of Okorafor's books to my wishlist. Her writing is engaging, her world-building is wonderful, and her characters are almost real. I found a copy at a used bookstore and onto my Mt. TBR it went.

While the title of the book draws some controversy, I can't speak to it as a white American. However, this is an excellent book and a discussion about people's feelings on the title should be a part of any book discussion.

I would highly recommend this book to anybody who enjoys fantasy or urban fantasy. If you like Harry Potter, as a child, adolescent, or adult, you'll probably enjoy this book. It is not a knock-off, the parallels run only so far as the themes and tropes of any YA/children's fantasy/urban fantasy. The book I would liken it to this year is "The Girl Who Drank the Moon" as a similar type of story that readers would enjoy both, although potentially geared to different age groups. I can verify that I am not the target audience for any of these books, but I enjoyed them all the same.

Akata Witch a lovely coming-of-age story about an amazing child who is doing her best in a true bind. (Spoilers: I though it was well done to have Sunny try to tell her mother what was going on, only to have the binding wrap her words in her throat and be unable. This lessened the inevitable child lying to adults theme that occurs in all YA coming-of-age stories.)

I've promised my copy to a reader via Bookcrossing and the USA & Canada Wishlist Tag Game 2019 . Before I finished, I checked out the next book, Akata Warrior. I finished Akata Witch today on the bus and have already started Akata Warrior.