This is a fun read that mixes contemporary fiction with sci-fi/Afro-futurism. The story held my interest and I found myself engrossed in the main character's life and decisions.

I really, REALLY enjoyed reading this. However, I have seen it marketed as science fiction and that, to me, is incorrect. I know that the story within a story is science fiction, but to me, the better comp would be Yellowface by RF Kuang. Like Yellowface, Death of the Author follows a writer struggling to get their first big break in publishing when a book far outside of their usual genre and style of writing makes it huge. Though this book lacks the plagiarism aspect, it still deals a ton with the social media aspects of fame, of discussions of authenticity in writing (with Zelu's disability). I think Zelu is a more likable and complex character than June, sure, but there are still some similar themes. The biggest thing holding me back from really enjoying this was that I was constantly waiting for the science fiction element to start. Would it be the ominous AI assistant? The self-driving cars? The billionaire traveling to the moon? But it just... never happened. Without that expectation, I would really have nothing to be disappointed in. The novel is beautifully written with a great character arc.

This one is going to make me think for a while. I enjoyed how the narratives interwove with one another, and speaks to what storytelling means and the impacts it has on an individual and a society. I found the main character a little abrasive and frustrating, which means I could really relate to her friends and family who are giving interview about her. But on the other hand I could understand why she would feel that way, and then upon reaching the ending it made me re-evaluate everything. I can't speak to the Nigerian American and Disability rep, but those were anchoring points in the novel.

This is a book that will change the way one looks at writing, authorship, ownership and humanity.
A story within a story, a world on the brink. The stories of Zelu, an outsider, othered by her family, co-workers and students, and the story of Ankara, also othered for it's close association to humanity, are woven together beautifully.
Zelu is out of options as her life slowly closes in on her. Inspiration strikes and her book, Rusted Robots, becomes an international sensation. The future in this book feels closer to now than ever before as we grapple with robotics, artificial intelligence and climate issues.

This was a good book and had a good balance between the plot of the story we’re following and the plot of the book that the main character wrote. However, the narrative got very bogged down in random details like the main character’s sister having to pepper spray a random guy, and the main character’s mother disliking the brother’s cat.

Thanks to William Morrow for the gifted copy!

Fantasy reading level: Beginner to medium; this could be categorized as literary fiction with a sci fi element
Perspectives: Black (Nigerian), disabled (parapalegic)

You want to read this for... a blended-genre discussion on humanity, individuality, the future of AI and robotics with Nigerian and disability rep.

About the book: Zelu needs a boost in her career - she just lost her job at a university and her latest novel was rejected. She decides to take a risk and write a novel unlike any she's written before, a sci fi drama centered on androids and AI, and it changes everything.

My review: DEATH OF THE AUTHOR is told with two alternating stories: Zelu's life, and excerpts from her book, Rusted Robots. Her life reads more like literary fiction and her book like sci fi, but explained well to appeal to a broader audience. I adored this blended method of storytelling to really highlight themes of humanity and identity.

Zelu also comes from a high-achieving Nigerian family who does not always agree with her decisions, and I appreciated how her family and her background came into play throughout the whole book. I love how Zelu personally took on some of the robotic technology with her exos, giving her the ability to walk and move freely instead of be bound to a wheelchair, and how that altered how she was viewed by so many. (My biomedical engineer heart had fun with this part).

This took me a few days to read and process. It's a novel that I really appreciate, and I am left thinking about the ending and the future of AI / technology. Highly recommend picking this one up!

Thanks to Nnedi Okorafor, William Morrow, and NetGalley for access to the Advanced Reader Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is a book destined to be selected for book lists and awards in the coming year. Well written and engaging, the book features a protagonist, Zelu, who charts her own path in her life, frequently with harsh criticism of her family and others. Yet she perseveres. While on her journey, she finds herself and learns to accept herself and others.

With themes of the importance to appreciate uniqueness, acceptance, finding your way, and the value of stories, this book provides profound insight on judgement in our society and what it means to be human. This is also one of those books that you will be quoting passages from to your friends. Recommended.

A familial drama with a fun, empowering, and emotional sci-fi twist!

This is definitely more in the lit-fic and family saga realm of things, so if Sci-Fi is intimidating, this may be the book for you. Alternately, if you are a fan of R.F. Kuang’s “Yellowface” OR Becky Chamber’s “Psalm For the Wild-Built” this will DEFINITELY be up your alley!

I wasn’t fully sure what to expect going into this story, I definitely was expecting this book to lean into the Science Fiction of everything more-so than it did, but a treat nonetheless.

A wonderfully lively examination of 1st Generation American families, Nigerian culture, and the experience of a disabled woman of color finding herself & her own voice against ALL odds.

This is NOT one to miss.

This deserves five stars, without reservation. I will admit, I didn’t really get into it for the first fifty pages, at least, and part of it was because I loathe the F word with a passion. Note: said word is the expression of choice, repeatedly, for nearly every character in the book. However! The book is fabulous. It’s a book within a book, and I loved both stories. I actually would like to read the main character’s book in its entirety.

I don’t want to say much more, but I will say this: The way Zelu’s family treats her is abhorrent. It made me so upset for her.

Just read this. It’s phenomenal.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for the pleasure of reading this book. All opinions are mine alone.

PS: I would love to see a sequel, but I won’t harass Ms. Okorafor online for it. If it comes, it comes. IYKYK.

firstly, thank you to the publisher for an arc!

3.5 rounded up

while i love the book-within-a-book trope, i felt that the “rusted robots” chapters that zelu wrote were too short to be immersive/fully appreciated.

additionally, this felt more lit-fic/family drama than sci-fi, which was a bit of a let down.

i am very excited to see the illumicrate/starbright special edition, though!

When I saw this book available for review, I eagerly requested a copy, as I’ve always enjoyed this author’s work. However, I have to admit it didn’t meet my expectations. Perhaps literary fiction just isn’t for me. I found myself more interested by the fictional book Rusted Robots mentioned in the novel than the actual story itself. Unfortunately, the main female character, Zelu, was difficult to connect with—her personality felt unbearable and unlikeable. Additionally, the plot moved at a sluggish pace, which made it hard to stay engaged. I ended up stopping at 21% and didn’t feel compelled to continue. Thank you NetGalley for providing the review copy.

Representation: Disabled Nigerian MC, Nigerian family and many Black ensemble, along with a few queer ensemble

Zelu has been through it, suddenly dropped from her university job and another novel rejection while she’s at her sister’s wedding. She has no idea what’s in store for her next as a disabled and unemployed person in a high-achieving and judgmental family. Zelu is just over it all, and decides to take a risk on writing something that she’s never written before. She doesn’t even read sci-fi, but that’s exactly what she writes, a story about robots, AI, and humanity being extinct. This book changes the course of her life, and indeed, the world.

Rating: 5/5 Holy shit y’all. I have shockingly not read any of Okorafor’s work yet, despite having several on my TBR for years now. I will absolutely be reading more of her work, having read this incredible story. This story is told in three frameworks - Zelu’s experience as she journeys through the writing of this book and the world’s reaction to it and her; interviews with family and loved ones; and parts of the story that Zelu wrote. Don’t go into this expecting a full sci-fi story, this is very much a story about humanity, the ugliness and beauty of it all. It touches on disability, cultural identity, fame, familial dynamics and expectations, technology, and so much. We see Zelu fighting against the image that her family has of her, a disabled child, and the world of her as a disabled adult. She wants to scream no, I am an adult and have a life, I don’t need your pity, I just need you to listen to me. I’ve seen some people comment on how toxic her close family is and how that’s unrealistic. Unfortunately, as a Deaf person, I have seen so many Deaf people go through life with zero relationship to their family, because they just don’t understand or are unwilling to accommodate the needs of the disabled person. This portrayal of Zelu’s family is sadly a very possible reality. I can’t speak to the wheelchair user aspect of it, so I will leave that to reviewers who have that experience. We get a full look into the experience of an author who has a sudden rise to fame, dealing with all the attention and demands from their fans, and struggling to live up to those expectations, while at the same time managing what they’re willing or not willing to do. Not only that, Zelu is descended from high-ranking Igbo and Yoruba. That adds another layer onto her experience, with Nigerians debating her novel completely set in her home country of Nigeria, despite her not living most of her life there. She wanted to pay homage to her ancestral land, and show the world an African story, a Nigerian story that doesn’t center the white person or Americans. Zelu felt like a real person, she is far from perfect. She’s stubborn, very blunt and honest, slightly immature and petty, but she’s also very intelligent, knows what she wants and won’t accept anything else. I don’t know how I feel about the interview portion, it felt slightly disconnected at times for me, but I really enjoyed getting words directly from the other characters, rather than what Zelu’s perception of them was. It gave us some more insight into how people viewed Zelu, and I appreciated how each character was easily distinct, which is very difficult to do with a large cast of characters. I personally really enjoyed the novel-in-a-novel, I’m very much a lover of sci-fi. I liked the concepts of Ankara versus Ijele, physical consciousness vs disembodied AI, the war between their kinds and finding common ground. Not human, yet oh so human. I did find myself often wanting more, one chapter stuck in between Zelu’s story never felt enough. I would gladly dive into a whole book written in this post-humanity world with Ankara and Ijele. Overall, this was an amazing story about an immigrant child breaking away from familial expectations and chasing her dreams, sometimes at the cost of others, along with a story about robots that’s still somehow about the experience of being human.

Death Of The Author is an emotional and inspiring story full of twists and turns. Full of heart and a burning spirit of asserting your being and identity in a world hellbent on forcing you into a box. This story has something everyone can enjoy and relate to; from overbearing family's that often mean well but miss the mark every time, to feeling invisible and excluded in a family and community of boisterous vivacious spirits, to struggles with finding oneself after reaching your lowest point.

Zelu is a character that I didn't know I needed until I read this story. She is a proud and lively disabled woman who is unapologetically herself and chases her dreams and goals no matter the odds. Even through struggles of dealing with a society bent on controlling her and treating her as delicate and incapable, every page she proves the world wrong that she is not only capable she will never back down even if she is alone. Zelu's self loathing for her disability and struggles to love herself for who she is while never letting someone put her into a box is deeply personal to me and resonated with me as I've felt my own power be stripped away due to disabilities that isolated me and chronic illnesses that have often resulted in well meaning loved ones hurting me because they didn't understand the struggles.

Within the book you get to read almost 3 stories in 1! The book Zelu is writing, the story of Zelu herself and her journey through life, and the interviews with her family after her book Rusted Robots becomes a huge success.

You are taken on adventure throughout the US and even Nigeria. The beating heart of Okorafor's culture makes the story electric and expands the reader's experience. Truly a wonderful story that I feel many need.

Interesting concept and creatively written. It was a little too slow for me at times. I was expecting more of a sci-fi book, which this really wasn't, so make sure you know that before starting! Thank you, NetGalley.

*3.75*
Very meta! I really enjoyed the journey and all of the different pieces that were used to build this story - a combo of Zelu's perspective, snippets of her novel, and interviews with her friends and family. Somehow it all works. I'd say this leans more towards literary than sci-fi, but it was a perfect combo for me. I loved Zelu. She was incredibly frustrating at times but so real and relatable.

Knocked down a bit due to the ending <spoiler> which features my absolute least favorite trope, but I think it was somewhat justified as a device that allowed Zelu to take a step further into the real-life sci fi modifications. </spoiler>

Previously I'd only read Binti from Nnedi Okorafor and didn't love it, but now definitely planning to check out some more of her adult and full-length works.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author is a thought-provoking and beautifully crafted exploration of identity, authorship, and the meaning of storytelling in a world where the boundaries between writer, text, and reader constantly shift. This book is a stunning blend of two running narratives and both are brilliant. If you like science fiction with heart, this book is for you.

Thank you NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for a review. This did not affect my thoughts or opinions on this novel.

In the near future United States, adjunct professor Zelu's life is about to hit its nadir. Death of the Author begins, with a family wedding, where she loses her job. Shortly thereafter she is forced to give up her apartment and move back in with her parents. Her large Nigerian-American family is loud, accomplished, and has regularly been highly supportive, but sometimes what is intended as advice or making sure one considers all the aspects of a situation can become restrictive and leave one trapped both by circumstances and over caution. *Light spoiler* Due to falling out of a tree at 12, Zelu is paraplegic and had to give up on her dreams of being an astronaut. Against a family of lawyers, engineers and doctors, what hopes are there for Zelu's skills as a writer? At her bottom, Zelu dives into a new project that will challenge her in ways never expected and perhaps open her up to a wider world.

Okorafor is well known for her strong character driven science fiction and fantasy works, including Binti. In Death of the Author Okorafor embraces some of the possibilities of our near future, but much of the plot is fueled by inter-familial structure and relationships. And of course plays with Roland Barthes literary criticism concept of not relying on the intentions or biography of an author to give meaning to a text. This concept is further developed as we are also treated to chapters of Zelu's post human robot work after it is written, alternating the narrative with Zelu's book and interviews with those close to her. There is much darkness hinted, but the reader must journey to the end themselves.

It a journey of self-discovery, over coming adversity, finding clarity and self acceptance.

Recommended for books within books, self discovery that is not coming-of-age, or near-future science fiction.

Generously stretching my estimation to 3.5 stars or so, so it can be rounded up.

I somehow keep reading Nnedi Okorafor books, despite every time deciding that I respected the book more than I liked it, and declaring that it was my last one. This one I made an exception for, since it's a wide swing away from the African-fantasist things I had most recently been reading by her: a mostly-grounded near-future novel with only the lightest sci-fi elements (mainly, a well-developed autonomous taxi industry [though newly established enough that the main character's parents' generation can be like "oh, those newfangled robot cars, don't trust them!"] and the existence of cutting-edge prosthetic leg exoskeleton prototypes). The focus is not sci-fi, but rather mostly an author struggling with abrupt fame from writing a smash-hit science fiction novel while also being a Nigerian-American paraplegic woman, with all the imposter syndrome, family drama, culture clash, racism, and ableism that entails.

Nnedi Okorafor is a good writer, and there are several very compelling sequences throughout the book. Her afterword includes a line thanking her daughter for reminding her not to worry about people thinking Zelu (the main character) was her - differences in professional biography aside, Okorafor is nevertheless also a Nigerian-American woman author of speculative fiction who was paralyzed from the waist down due to complications from spinal surgery, though she has since recovered the ability to walk. This is both good and bad, for the novel: on the one hand, Okorafor brings an authenticity to Zelu's struggles with her disability (especially the flashbacks to shortly after her accident and her subsequent difficulties adjusting and recovering) and the perspective on the cultural strain of bridging Nigerian and American family dynamics, even if we accept her at her word that the dynamics at play are not exactly drawn from her life; on the other, I always find it a little weird when an author writes a book about a lightly fictionalized version of themselves and then spends the whole book having everybody be like "oh my God, your book is so amazing, you are the finest writer of science fiction alive."

There are a few issues like that, where the book sort of strained my suspension of disbelief (for lack of a better term). I'm going on too long already, so I'll just mention the biggest one: Zelu gets to be a user of a prototype leg exoskeleton that enables her to walk again, and nearly her entire family throws a fit because it's either dangerous or against God's will to use a machine to contravene her disability -- maybe this is a genuine portrait of a certain cultural attitude in the Nigerian or Nigerian-American community, but the counterargument of "but I currently use a machine (a wheelchair)" is so obvious and irrefutable that it makes either the family's opposition unbelievable, or unbelievable that Zelu would not have cut out her family after that kind of treatment. It's not just her family, either: she gets pushback from the host of a major news talk show as well as various quoted social media posts on the general grounds that "oh you rich person how dare you take advantage of expensive robot legs that other disabled people can't get, also it is ableist to want to walk again!" and I found all of that foofaraw incomprehensible. Yeah, maybe some people would have a problem with the inequitable access to fancy tech, but this shit is still a brand-new development, it obviously wouldn't be available cheaply and everywhere yet, and the amount of people essentially telling Zelu that she should remain wheelchair-bound because it's unfair not to was baffling to me.

I said the book was only lightly sci-fi, but that's because I am ignoring the fact that there are chapters interspersed also telling the story from Zelu's bestselling book (with the boring title of <i>Rusted Robots</i>). This is basically because, past a certain point, I also ignored those chapters. I don't know, perhaps they served a grand emotional counterpoint to the contemporary story (and in the end seemed to be trying to recontextualize all the events in Zelu's storyline), but I found myself fairly uninterested in them and also rolling my eyes at this story which I was uninterested in being lauded in-universe as a great masterpiece of science fiction. Authors: don't do this. Never set up some in-universe work of fiction as The Best Ever and then include snippets of that work in the book. It almost never works and it's distracting.

Anyway, after complaining about the book the whole time in this review I nevertheless say, it's pretty good, go read it if you want. Just don't expect it to be as mindblowing as <i>Rusted Robots</i>.

This book wasn’t what I was expecting. The main character hates her life, everybody, and the world. I was expecting a scifi book, not a lit fic book. Also the writing did not work for me. It’s filled with stilted sentences. For these reasons, I dnf’d it

Actually a 4.5.

This was an incredible book to start of 2025 with. I'll start of by saying this is more so literary fiction with more muted sci-fi elements, so manage your expectations accordingly. That said, I think it manages to blend the two genres together in a really interesting and unique way. I've never read a book quite like this one and I was really impressed by it. Not only does it manage to blend two genres I don't necessarily associate with each other, but it also manages to seamlessly blend together *two different stories*, subplots, characters, relationships, etc. It all just flows together so easily you don't really notice how much you're really absorbing. I will say that at points the pacing was a bit too fast and I wish we'd gotten to spend more time with Zelu during her journey writing her novel and within the literary world, but this book covers so much time that sometimes it just had to zap from one point to the next.

I *loved* the ending. Everything just goes full circle in a twist that maybe I should have seen coming, but I definitely didn't. The only thing I have to say I found underwhelming about the ending was that through the entire novel we are reading interviews with Zelu's loved ones after some undefined thing happens to her, but it's never actually made clear what that undefined thing actually was.

This is one of those books where you can just feel the love the author had for it coming off the page and I think that really helped the experience.