The Shadow Speaker




*An NAACP Image award Nominee*


*Finalist for the Andre Norton Award*


*Finalist for the 2008 Essence Magazine Literary Award*


*A TiptreE Honor Book*


*Finalist For the Golden Duck Award*


*A Winter 2007/2008 Booksense Pick*


*A CCBC Choice for 2008*


*A Locus Magazine Recommended Book*


 

Haunted by vengeance. Destined for peace.

Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu says this about The Shadow Speaker:  "Spontaneous forests, polygamy, strange insects, Nigerian 419 scammers, really really fast cars, a different kind of Sahara Desert, male beauty contests, the apocalypse, life, death, sword fights, fat chiefs, assassins, this novel is kind of nuts!"

Niger, West Africa, 2070

When fifteen-year old Ejii witnesses her father's beheading, her world shatters. In an era of mind-blowing technology and seductive magic, Ejii embarks on a mystical journey to track down her father's killer. With a newfound friend by her side, Ejii comes face to face with an earth turned inside out -- and with her own magical powers.

But Ejii soon discovers that her travels across the sands of the Sahara have a greater purpose. Her people need to be protected from a force seeking to annihilate them. And Ejii may be just the hero to do it.

Praise for The Shadow Speaker:

It’s easy to name a dozen fantasy novels set in England but, save for Nancy Farmer’s futuristic book “The Ear, the Eye and the Arm,” difficult to think of one set anywhere in Africa — just one of many unexpected pleasures in Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu’s novel “The Shadow Speaker”...This novel — like the author’s first, “Zahrah the Windseeker” (2005) — leaves little doubt that Okorafor-Mbachu’s imagination is stunning.
-- The New York Times

THE SHADOW SPEAKER is wonderful, highly original stuff, episode after amazing episode, full of color, life and death. The people and the places in the Shadow Speaker all feel so real. Nnedi also deals head-on with the fact that power and pain are closely linked, as are magic and blood. I think this book is MARVELOUS.
-- Diana Wynne Jones, author of Howl's Moving Castle, Dark Lord of Derkholm, and the Chronicles of Chrestomanci

There's more vivid imagination in a page of THE SHADOW SPEAKER than in whole volumes of ordinary fantasy epics.
-- Ursula K. Le Guin, author of the classic Earthsea series, The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe of Heaven, and many more.

Many will also embrace the novel’s complicated characters, especially its women, and the unusual appearance of African, Muslim traditions in a science fiction context. Fans of Nancy Farmer’s The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm (1994) will want to give this a try.
-Booklist

THE SHADOW SPEAKER is endlessly imaginative, full of mystery and delight on every page. Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu is a voice that will delight readers of all ages and backgrounds. She has created an adventure worthy of Harry Potter, told from a new and intriguing part of the world.
-- Tananarive Due, American Book Award-winning author of JOPLIN'S GHOST

As wildly inventive and suspenseful as her first novel, THE SHADOW SPEAKER is at the same time more ambitious and thematically complex, and represents a major step forward for a storyteller who, in the tradition of Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson , is equally adept at combining that most contemporary of forms, science fiction, with the ancient beliefs and values of non-western cultures that have for too long been underrepresented in modern fantastic literature.
-- Gary Wolfe , award-winning critic and lead reviewer for Locus Magazine 

From the Booksense Winter 2008/2009 Pick List:
Ejii, a young woman from West Niger who can see into other people's minds, travels across the Sahara in 2070 in search of her father's killer. She contends with sand cats, desert magicians, and villages constructed entirely out of vegetation -- and befriends a boy with the power to change the weather. This is a thoughtful, awesome fantasy for young adults." --Tasha Pohrt, Shaman Drum Bookshop, Ann Arbor, MI

The Barnes and Noble Review:
For 13 and older, my pick for best fiction of the year is The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. A young adult devoted to Orson Scott Card for his complicated societies set in the future will be thrilled to discover this complex quest tale that begins in the Sahara Desert of 2070.

Tiptree Award Juror:
I found this to be a fascinating, powerfully written story of futuristic Africa from a perspective we rarely see in science fiction and fantasy- An African woman who is confident in creating in disparate realms, all of which are clearly her own.

In a world where technology and magic are woven into one, Okorafor-Mbachu has carefully drawn a horrifyingly accurate and moving account of some of the most disturbing political and ecological atrocities that are taking place in Africa at this time, and yet the work is hopeful in a non-cynical, non-pop-cultural “We are the world “ kind of way, and reaffirms that real change though difficult, can be achieved.

The novel is, at its heart, a coming-of-age work in which young Ejii, who witnessed her father’s brutal murder a the hands of a woman who is both her mentor and her captor, must navigate a new space for herself while coming to terms with her own evolving womanhood and personal power.

Right now, in terms of imagination, ‘long vision,’ and storytelling magic, Okorafor-Mbachu is up there with Okri, Abani, and Zakes Mda. Based on Nigerian history and folklore, I think The Shadow Speaker covers some rich ground, exploring what it means to be ‘sister outsider’ and how it is often the ones who walk between the worlds who help us understand it the most. -Sheree Renee Thomas

Children's Literature review
Africa in 2070 has been a land infused with magic ever since the nuclear fallout from the Great Change. Fourteen-year-old Ejii is a shadow-speaker who can communicate with the hovering shadows all around her, and through them, with the innermost being of those she encounters. But the world of the future is no less brutal and warlike than our own world of today, and Ejii is sent on a dangerous mission with Sarauniya Jaa, the Red Queen of the Niger, who once beheaded Ejii's own savagely controlling father to put a bloody end to his tyranny. Can Ejii and Jaa now forestall devastating war between Earth and the four other worlds that have been opened to it? Okorafor-Mbachu has created a series of fantastic and mesmerizing landscapes, from the deserts of Nigeria to the lush forests of alternate world Ginen, where buildings are actually gigantic, living, blooming plants. Ejii and her companion, a young, previously enslaved rainmaker, must learn whom they can and cannot trust, and how much they are willing to risk to save their endangered planet. Okorafor-Mbachu's moral landscape is complex and shifting as well, inviting readers to ponder sweeping ethical questions such as whether deadly violence, even to oppose great evil, is ever justified. This is a rich and powerful debut novel from a fresh new voice in young adult fantasy. Reviewer: Claudia Mills, Ph.D.

VOYA review
The world has changed by the year 2070. Nuclear war has transformed Earth and its people. Ejii, a young West African girl, has also been affected by this disturbance. She is a shadow speaker, a mau girl who can read the thoughts of any living thing that is around her. Ejii struggles with her gift but eventually realizes that she must seek out her destiny. How can Ejii help save Earth from total destruction while keeping her friends and family safe? Does she have the strength to harness the shadow speaker power that she possesses to help those who cannot see the truth? Okorafor-Mbachu does an excellent job of combining both science fiction and fantasy elements into this novel. She describes advanced forms of technology along with highly-evolved animals that can speak and move just like humans. Humans have also evolved in Okorafor-Mbachu's world. Just as Ejii possesses the power to speak to all living things, other humans have similar powers-some control the rain, others can control the wind, and so forth. She also discusses the idea of other worlds or planes that humans and other life forms can move through freely. The action moves along at a quick pace and will keep most readers on their toes and wanting more at the end of the novel. Be on the lookout for a sequel to this well-written, SF/fantasy novel. Reviewer: Jonatha Masters
 

An excerpt from
The Shadow Speaker

As the green shape grew, the earthquake subsided. Soon everyone had turned south, watching and waiting. Even the crying children and roaring camels had gotten quiet.

The green tint soon spread over the sky, quickly approaching them. Ejii grasped her mother's hand and touched the amulet that hung from her neck with her other hand. She could hear her mother whisper, "Inshallah," -God willing, her mother whispered.

Then the green wave came with a WHOOOOSH! Its wind pushed everyone a few steps north, only the toddlers and the very old fell to the ground. Palm trees bent northward and monkey bread trees lost all their fruits.

The strength of the wave forced Ejii to inhale deeply as it passed. It smelled of a thousand roses blooming at the same time in the same place for the same reason. She sneezed and looked at her mother and they both pressed closer to each other. It wasn't the end. It was another beginning. But of what

Hyperion Books for Children . www.hyperionbooksforchildren.com

For review copies, contact: Colin Hosten at colin.hosten-AT-disney.com.

Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu made her fiction debut with Zahrah the Windseeker. Her second novel is The Shadow Speaker. Her short stories have won many awards, and she holds a PhD in English from the University of Illinois.

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