I loved this so much. The disability representation, the conflicting identities a person can have, the journey to find yourself and self-acceptance -- oh and robots! Basically it had it all. And then there was an anticipation that kept building up the entire novel -- something was going to happen, Zelu was going to do something, and I NEEDED to know what it was. I was NOT expecting that ending but it was just so so good. Man. I loved it.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is the first review copy book that I immediately purchased on its release date. I mean, I have purchased books I've read DRCs/ARCs of - but never before I even finished the book. I usually buy them after stewing in the afterglow of the book high and hoping to find something that would be worthy of reading afterward.
Can there possibly be something that would compare to this book that I could follow it with?
I immediately added all the author's books to my TBR.

Two books in and I already have my book of the year.

I don't think much more is needed, but I am expected to write a review, so here goes, although I cannot do this book any kind of justice.

Zelu has always had three desires at her core: to go on adventures, to write, and to go to space. After falling from a tree at age 12, though, she is confined to a wheelchair and at the mercy of her loving but judgemental and misunderstanding family.

While away from her job as a university adjunct, attending her sister's wedding, Zelu gets a call, and is fired. Not long after, her manuscript is rejected yet again from another publisher (she has sent it to many). She is devastated, and she is angry.

After moving back in with her well-meaning parents, where her siblings visit regularly, she escapes reality by writing a new book. Born of dead dreams and lead-heavy emotions, she writes Rusted Robots - a post-apocalyptic novel where humanity has all but gone extinct (there is one human left), and artificial intelligence has factioned into tribes - the Humes, or Rusted Robots, and the NoBodies, or Ghosts.

With violent and hateful prejudice against each other, they cannot understand the others' thoughts and actions. When the NoBodies send out a a protocol to destroy the Humes, it seems as though they would win out. But the last human finds a Hume, legs crushed, and replaces their legs, and also, working to avoid a system crash, stitches them back together by inserting a Ghost into their code.

Alternating between Zelu's life, which turns absolutely wild after the book is published, interviews with family and friends of Zelu, and Zelu's book itself, Death of the Author reaches into the readers' heart and clenches its fist, leaving a permanent imprint of this wonderfully weaved story.

I loved that Zelu was nearly unlikeable but also relateable. I loved that despite every move she made coming under scrutiny from her family, then the world, she still refused to bow and be boxed into categories that seem inescapable. I love how I could feel Zelu's family in her story, how I could feel Zelu in her story, as if she had taken herself apart in the different characters.

Stunning. Stunning. Like an ouroboros. Realizes the dreams of readers of sci-fi, post-apocalyptic fiction, and family drama. Very nearly perfect.

I absolutely love this book. I am not usually a sci-fi reader, so I didn't have high expectations. The characters are messy, but the story is perfection. This is a combination of family drama and sci-fi. Zelu had some unlikable characteristics, but as you learn more about her story you understand her and her complications.

What a wonderful book. Nnedi Okorafor has become an auto buy author for me and this is another shining example of why. The chapters are all so messy and human. The way Okorafor weaves together the different storylines is masterful. The world building in all of her books is so skillful. I'm really looking forward to doing an audio reread of this soon.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Upon finishing this book, I was trying to explain it to a friend and the best description I could come up with was that it reminded me of a mobius strip, twisting into itself in an infinite loop, ignoring boundaries, and defying logic. I'm getting ahead of myself though, because Nnedi Okorafor's, Death of the Author, is so unassuming in its opening half that it's hard to even consider it truly science fiction. This is what makes it both great and frustrating. Getting to know our protagonist, Zelu, through the interviews, third person narration, as well as the novel that she has created, reads as more of a character study through much of the book. Though there are moments in which the reader is led to believe this is not the present, but a very near future, there is nothing that suggests Zelu is too far removed from us. This may end up upsetting some sci-fi readers and yet it may not find those who many appreciate how literary it is, I certainly hope that is not the case, because this is a book that I truly hope reaches beyond genre readers.

At the lowest point in her life, Zelu births a novel that captivates the world and much of what follows is how the novel begins to dictate her life. The novel and Zelu are so intertwined that they cease to exist without each other. Meanwhile, every few chapters, we are given a glimpse of the novel that tells a story about the end of humanity and the rise of robots and AI. Although they feel so separate, it is impossible not to see how Okorafor has linked the two stories together with such subtlety that by the end you are both shocked and yet primed for the reveal.

I really enjoyed this book. I have read some of Nnedi Okorafor's novellas and when I had the opportunity to receive an advance e-copy of this, I jumped at the opportunity. The characters were both sympathetic and wholly frustrating in their flawed humanity, and made even more apparent when juxtaposed with the excerpts from Zelu's Rusted Robots novel. I can see why people may come away from this disliking Zelu for her choices, but I can't help loving her choice to live the life she wanted without compromise. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an advanced eARC of the text.

This was one of my most-anticipated books of January 2025; I was so excited to read it. This was also the first book I've read by this author, though it is far from her first book. After I finished reading it, I read her bio & realized that she has written quite a few young adult novels, which explained a lot. Although I was very intrigued by the plot of this book, I found the writing itself disappointing. It was perfectly serviceable, but it often felt young adult in its level of sophistication & attention to detail. There was a lot of telling rather than showing.

The story follows Zelu, an aspiring writer who loses her adjunct position after telling a student that his writing is shit (a fantasy sequence for anyone who has ever been in a writing workshop, for sure!). The novel she's been toiling over for a decade has just been rejected from ANOTHER publisher, & her family makes her feel weird & lesser at her sister's wedding because she's a paraplegic who gets around in a wheelchair following a childhood accident. In this low place, she starts writing a sci fi novel about a war between AI systems following the extinction of humanity. & bing bang boom, it sells & it's a massive hit. Her new high profile as a bestselling author puts her on the radar of a doctor who has been working on experimental tech to help people with disabilities like her have the option to walk again. Her father dies, she struggles to produce the next novel in her series, she falls in love, etc. I won't spoil the end, but it was really surprising & satisfying.

I really think the story here is GREAT. I just wish the writing lived up to it. The timeline was messy. Entire years go by with literally nothing happening. I kept wondering if a debut author who took THIS LONG to produce her next book would really be THAT high-profile literally years later. Another issue with a book-in-a-book plot in which the book is supposed to have been a mega-smash bestseller is that it ups the ante on making that interior book really fucking good, & although things get discursive, "Rusted Robots," Zelu's book, wasn't that great. It suffered from the same flat, uninspiring writing as the book as a whole, & it's sci fi about robots. I have a hard time imagining a book like that succeeding the way it does in the novel. I mean, I read a ton & I love literary sci fi & books about technology gone wrong, but even I am not going to read a book about AI systems at war. Called "Rusted Robots". What a terrible title.

That wasn't the only bizarre leap of logic that the book asks us to accept either. The story was propulsive enough to keep me going, but again, I wish the writing had been better. Amazing writing can help transcend so many flaws in logic or characterization. A quote I'm seeing in other reviews: "'How amazing! I have come to understand that author, art, and audience all adore one another. They create a tissue, a web, a network. No death is required for this form of life." This could be significantly tightened up & burnished into something better. It has so much promise in the way the metaphors chime with the themes of the book, but as written, the overall phraseology is clunky, almost sloppy.

What a story though.

Wow. How did Okorafor pull this off? There is so much going on, especially with the book within a book, and even though sometimes I didn't know up from down or right from left, I couldn't stop turning pages. This is a genre all of its own and a book I'll be thinking about all year. This is a book about robots, but really about what it means to be human and I couldn't get enough of it.

4.5⭐️

Familial expectation wars against an author’s personal ambition in this mixed genre novel about a paraplegic Nigerian-American woman,Zelu.

I enjoyed the book even though it was long. Told from mainly Zelu’s POV and those of her family and friends, we are taken on Zelu’s impulsive, fearless and sometimes irrational journey as an author, adrenaline junkie, daughter, sister, friend and wife.

Embedded in this book is a symbolic and satirical story about the end of the world and robots taking over. I enjoyed the sci-fi bit but felt it ended abruptly just as the fictional part.

There were so many things the author took a swipe at- patriarchy, ableism, sexism, cancel culture, nationalism, family dynamics, dysfunctional relationships, social media culture and racism.

There was so much to pack in. The literary fiction part was believable with the characters relatable and interesting. The story of the robots also packed its punch.

This is an incredible masterpiece making distinct parts of a book work together seamlessly and independently.

I look forward to reading more from this author.

4.25⭐️

Wow! This is such a unique book! This is mostly a literary fiction family drama with a touch of sci-fi in the form of a book within a book. The main character is Zelu, a black paraplegic female author who starts the novel in a low place but then skyrockets from there. I absolutely loved the literary fiction parts and the character development. The characters are so real, especially Zelu, and very well developed although many are also quite unlikeable. As in any close family, the family dynamics are complicated, which made it all the more realistic. I loved learning more about the Nigerian culture and the perspective of a disabled black Nigerian-American female.

I don’t tend to read much sci-fi but the sci-fi portion of the book was compelling and I found myself looking forward to those chapters and delving back into that world.

Overall, I highly recommend this book and look forward to reading more from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and William
Morrow for an advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor was such a fabulous story.
This book was amazing, kept me hooked every moment of it.
I do believe this is one of the best literary fiction stories I’ve ever read. Also joined alongside Afro futurism sci-fi.

Wow wow wow. Death of the Author is a breathtaking epic from Nnedi Okorafor who weaves in disability, artificial intelligence/automation, fan culture, science fiction, Africanfuturism, and contemporary fiction. Through the novel, we follow Zelu, a disabled, Nigerian professor who is abruptly fired from her professorship while she attends her cousin's wedding. She moves back in her with her mother and father and writes what eventually becomes a blockbuster of a novel, Rusted Robots. The novel intersperses interviews with Zelu's family, chapters of Rusted Robots, and the point of view from Zelu herself. Every piece of this novel works - I got so invested in the story of Rusted Robots and how everything turned out, while also falling for Zelu and all her friends and family who surround her.

I highly, highly recommend Death of the Author - this is another incredible novel from Okorafor and unlike anything else I've read before.

Thank you to NetGalley and to William Morrow for the advanced copy.

Many thanks to @netgalley for this ARC! Death of the Author is being released tomorrow, January 14 and I’m so excited for everyone to be able to read it!

I’ve loved Nnedi Okorafor’s writing since her Binti trilogy and was very happy to get to read her latest work.

The first storyline is set in Chicago, centering around Zelu, a paraplegic Nigerian-American writer who is, as everyone in her family will readily attest, a bit of a mess. We first meet her at her sister’s wedding and pretty quickly see her life fall apart in a big way. Throughout the book, we see her parents and siblings love her in the best/only way they know how, which is often full of critiques and loud voices speaking over her, even as she’s achieving some pretty incredible things.

The second storyline is set in a post-human Lagos, Nigeria. The main character in this one is Ankara, a Scholar Hume- humanoid robot- obsessed with collecting and retelling stories, who is given terrible information on her journey and has to decide what to do with that information.

We see both Zelu and Ankara face physical struggles and existential threats and build strange relationships that no one around them understood.

I was super impressed with how one of the storylines wrapped up and felt like the other one had alllllll sorts of foreshadowing that led to nothing? Weeks after finishing this one, I’m still going over my highights and notes and thinking about it and wishing I had someone to talk about it with!

oh i feel like i'm going to be thinking about this book for a long time and i kind of don't know how to write out my thoughts without really spoiling it.
This is a great sci fi entry point for lit fic readers. It's a story within a story - one level has Zelu a disabled Nigerian American writer who experiences the lowest point in her life only to come out of it with a novel that skyrockets her to fame worldwide. What follows is her journey to reclaim her life from what has been laid out and expected of her and the success and struggles she faces while doing so. Zelu was an incredibly interesting character - not particularly likeable all the time, she is selfish and can be one track minded - but there's a lot of nuanced work done by Okorafor and I really understood a lot of the decisions she made even as i was shaking my head at them. The dynamic with her siblings and parents was frustrating but honest, i often wanted to shake all of them and tell them to just LISTEN to one another.
On the other hand is her novel, Rusted Robots, which we get pieces of throughout the book. These snippets are easy to follow and why I think the book is a good step in for people who aren't always comfortable in the sci fi genre. The ways that Robots mirrored, and even sometimes predicted, moments and memories from Zelu's life were really impactful for my reading experience. And as always there's a lot to say about humanity by way of bodiless AIs and, well, rusted robots.
The ending simultaneously left me wanting more and also left my brain WHIRRING between the various stories. I felt like Zelu's story was building up to something that didn't quite land, or maybe in further thinking about it this will all come together for me. But i felt like the interviews implied some big moment in Zelu's life and short of the fact that she went to space i'm not sure what that thing was? It felt more momentous than what we actually got, but maybe I'm missing something.

Death of the Author alternates between Zelu's life of newfound success, her robot novel, and family interviews. Upon losing her job and facing rejection of her latest manuscript, Zelu initiates the writing of a science fiction novel centered on robots. Surprisingly, the book attains remarkable success.

Ordinarily, I'm not a fan of multiple POV shifts, but in this case, the narrative benefited from this approach. The interviews with Zelu's family members offered a nuanced understanding of her character, which was necessary given the dysfunctional nature of their relationships. I found their behavior towards her disturbing, but her growth and increasing assertiveness were admirable. The Rusted Robots chapters were enjoyable, although the shifts between storylines occasionally caused frustration. Nevertheless, I was fully invested in both narratives, which explored complex, yet intersecting conflicts and character arcs.

This novel is outstanding, weaving together a rich tapestry of themes and topics. It would be an excellent choice for a book club. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

Consider this two books in one. Literally, because there are chapters of the book Zelu writes throughout the book about Zelu, her family, her disability, her culture, etc. And while sometimes I questioned why I needed to read a book within a book, it comes together at the end in a very satisfying way. I also really liked both stories. Zelu's family drama made me feel for her so much! I recognize that different cultures have different familial characteristics, but the constant harassment of her for embarrassing the family made no sense. Sadly, they took no pride in her or offered support in ways other than to infantile her. (Is that how you say it?) And the story Zelu wrote was a terrific reflection of where she was and where she was going! It was all kind of magical!

The writing felt stilted and clunky here. It sets out to tackle a variety of topics but doesn't really spend enough time handling any of them. The book within the book aspect in theory sounded amazing but those parts didn't flow as well in execution.

'Death of the Author' is a science fiction book which can be appreciated by non-sci-fi lovers. It follows Zelu, a disabled, Nigerian American author as she pens a sci-fi novel that takes the world by storm, but then finds that everyone is more interested in her own life and how she has begun to integrate AI adaptive technologies. The book follows Zelu and her family across continents, as well as tells the story of robots after humans have ceased to exist.

The parallels between the two stories in this book are fun to examine, and Okorafor's commentary on AI and humanity is well thought out and nuanced. I found myself drawn in and rooting for Zelu, even as she made choices I didn't agree with.

Thank you to Nnedi Okorafor and William Morrow for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

DEATH OF THE AUTHOR

A very happy pub day to DEATH OF THE AUTHOR by Nnedi Okorafor! This was my first novel from Okorafor, and I really enjoyed reading it (thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the digital copy)! Zelu, the main character, is a triumph. She's complex and three-dimensional, and although she was occasionally frustrating, I always understood where she was coming from.

If you're interested in potentially picking this up, you should know up front that this isn't reeeeally a sci-fi novel. I'd describe it as primarily a character study and a family drama with some very lightly speculative elements and snippets of a sci-fi story thrown in. To be clear, this didn't bother me at all, and in fact I quite enjoyed how it's kind of in a genre of it's own. My aim in calling it out is simply to clarify any expectations.

On the family drama tip, I found this to be the least baked piece of the book. A lot of it still worked for me, but I often found myself scratching my head at Zelu's relationship with some of her siblings, especially Chinyere. Given how many disagreements they had, some of which got kind of vicious, I think I needed a bit more of the siblings' perspective or side of things to really understand their point of view. Without it, they frequently come off like unsupportive caricatures, and I don't think that's intentional.

The snippets you get of Zelu's novel are a lot of fun. Books about other pieces of art that take the world by storm are always a gamble, but this one sticks the landing in my view.

Overall, I'm quite glad to have read this. It might not crop up in my end-of-year favorites, but it was refreshing and inventive. If you read it, DM me about the family stuff, I'll be interested in others' takes.

"Death of the Author" by Nnedi Okorafor combines contemporary fiction, Afro-futurism, science fiction, family drama, and much more in its pages.

This story centers on Zelu, the second oldest daughter of Nigerian parents, who are from different tribes. The family is large and deeply rooted in West African/Nigerian customs and thinking, even though they all now live in/around Chicago.
Zelu is in a wheelchair since the age of 12 due to an accident. She is an adjunct professor of English, who is not fond of her current students and their ineptness. Zelu is unceremoniously relieved of her job (via telephone) while at a Sister's wedding in the Caribbean. She has also been attempting to publish a novel, but has been rejected many times. When Zelu refocuses and writes a highly popular science fiction novel about androids, AI, and the end of the human race, it becomes a best-seller and worldwide phenomenon--even becoming a highly successful movie adaptation, though not exactly the adaptation Zelu would've hoped.

The story takes us from present/future day and mixes with selected chapters from Zelu's best-seller, "Rusted Robots." So, a story within a story.

The writing is descriptive, easy to follow, authentic and imaginative. Okorafor conveys much emotion of Zelu and her family.
Zelu, who is Nigerian-American, wheelchair-bound, and very dutiful to her family, though she is still outspoken and determined to "living her own life." This creates much tension between Zelu and her family and others and their evolving relationships--especially after Zelu's novel is published and becomes a best-seller.

The introduction of the researcher and his team who have an amazing opportunity for Zelu, presents an interesting dilemma. I enjoyed this aspect of the story, as I was not expecting Zelu's family to be in such opposition to her and her wishes.
The representation of Nigerian culture through food and celebration was authentic and well-presented throughout the story.

The AI/humanoid/robot characters from the story-within-a-story were fleshed out and the themes in these storylines often paralleled the real life of Zelu/current events. I liked the juxtaposition and furthering of the story with these switches between the "real" life and the alternate story.

The humanoids/"ghosts" and other beings from the "Rusted Robots" story--are very well conveyed throughout the story. The developing relationship/friendship of the two main robot characters was sincere and sweet, and I enjoyed their symbiotic journey.

I would recommend this book to all. I bet the audio is going to be amazing as well!!

Thank you, NetGalley and William Morrow (publisher) for the Advance Reader Copy (e-read) of "Death of the Author."

Thank you Netgalley and William Morrow for this ARC!!

Hmmmm I'm not really sure how to place this book. I don't have particularly strong feelings either away about this book. I didn't really enjoy the interweaving of book within a book, but I did like the interviews and how real the characters felt. Overall, I think I was just hoping for some more character growth for all the characters.