I love a book within a book, and this one was so interesting. There are sci-fi elements which is not really my thing, but I still really enjoyed the narrative. Excellent character building and plotting. An entertaining read for sure.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

So i will start off by saying this was a well written book. The way Okafur shows the personality of Zelu and then flips back to the story of rusted robots was very smooth.

Although that’s true, the science fiction part just didn’t do it for me like i expected. I enjoyed the literary fiction part of the story more. I loved Zelu’s dgaf attitude up into the end. Because girl, what was that?

I liked maybe about half of this story.

I know this is a definite case of it's me and not you and I'm so sorry, story. But I struggled with this one.

I did this as an audio book and I don't think it helped me. I initially found Zelu interesting. I felt bad for how her family treated her and loved her fire and fight about her story and opinions. I found the pieces about the robots the most confusing. I struggled to piece together the world, their intentions and why it was included in the story. Finally, the interviews felt disjointed and I kept trying to figure out why we were hearing everyone's stories when they didn't always focus on the main character, the story, the movie, or anything they were currently talking about.

I would have loved to feel all the pieces of the story all meld together, which I think is my fault and not the fault of the story. I wanted to love it but I found the story disjointed and it never pulled me in and made me interested.

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

More more more please!!! Love the representation of my culture (Naija for the win!). I honestly was wary of starting this book because I’ve never read an Afro-futuristic book. This being my intro to the genre was well worth it. Nnedi has a blessed pen and I’m excited to read more from her.

Omg I don't even know what to say with this book. It really is inventive and unique in the best way. First, I am not the biggest sci-fi reader, but I have been interested in this author for awhile so I was stoked to see she wrote a literary/sci-fi blend surrounding an author. Honestly, I am not super interested in robots--so those chapters didn't hold my attention as much. However, Zulu's chapters were compelling from the jump. I always enjoy a narrative structure where we learn about a character by hearing about several other character perspectives. So the way we heard from siblings, journalists, and other people she crossed paths with was interesting and really added to the story. So many moments in this story made my jaw drop, and I also really felt for Zelu during several climactic or confrontational scenes. This book is going to stick with me for awhile and I encourage people to go into it without knowing too much!

Death of the Author has all the elements I love. There's a book within a book which lends it not only a meta feel, but feels absolutely necessary. We witness the rise and the life of Zelu from the bottom to the top. Death of the Author immediately asks us what people will say about us when we're famous. It's a book that examines how much of a role we have in our own life. How much can we control what people, our family, our loved ones, say about us? When we become famous, an author, how much of us dies?

I generally will read anything Nnedi Okorafor writes. I was instantly taken in by the characters, setting, and culture of the Zelu and her family. When the book began to delve into her novel's story, I got lost and the book had a hard time holding my interest. I will, of course, continue to read anything Okorafor writes, but I think I like when she explores more futurism, and this felt like it was lacking that. (for me!)

I couldn't finish this book. The continuous cursing was so annoying and distracting. I didn't get very far in the book. I don't even know what it was about.

Nnedi Okorafor is such a good author. I would read anything that she writes. However, even among her stellar catalogue of books this one stands out. I also really liked the story within the story, I guess I am like Zelu's fans because I would love to read this book and its sequels.

I have followed Nnedi Okorafor for years yet this is the first book I’ve read and it is unlike anything I’ve read before. I’m normally a sucker for stories within stories so I quickly fell into this one. This is also the one time that I didn’t love the concept. The insert of Rusted Robots was a distraction from the real story, or so I thought. It wasn’t until the end that I realized what was going on and admittedly, my mind was slightly blown. For this reason, there were waves of disinterest here and there however, Okorafor never failed to pull me back into the fray. This may be my first read but not my last.

This book is being voluntarily reviewed after receiving a free copy courtesy of NetGalley, the Publisher, and Nnedi Okorafor.

I am always fifty-fifty on Nnedi Okorafor, not all of her books resonate directly with me, but this one was definitely such a beautifully written book. Zelu's conflict around the writing of her book, and the commentary on fame, social media and disability I found to be very poignant. Similarly, I love the way the family is written, it reminds me of my own family, their idiosyncrasies and how they collide against Zelu and her thoughts.

Zelu has always been a storyteller and she has always felt like an outsider in her Nigerian American family. A paraplegic since falling from a tree as a child, Zelu used to dream of flying among the stars, yet now she feels as if she's ever falling. When the novel she's been writing for 10 years gets its umpteenth rejection and she loses her adjunct professor job, she moves back in with her parents and lets herself fall under the thrall of a new inspiration. A novel set in the future, wherein humanity is extinct and metal robots war with disembodied AI beings, *Rusted Robots* becomes a stratospheric success. Yet even as Zelu gains wealth and popularity, finally hitting her stride, she begins to lose control of the narrative. "I've been deleted from my own story," she thought. "They've just erased me."
Author Nnedi Okorafor has masterfully crafted a book within a book, interspersing chapters of Zelu's story with chapters of the postapocalyptic *Rusted Robots.* Both books explore what it means to be human, and together they revel in the power of storytelling. Death of the Author manages to be both timely and timeless, with themes that include family, living in the margins, the writer's life, race, culture, change, fame, shame, forgiveness, self-acceptance, and that "creation flows both ways." The book's title is genius.

[Thanks to William Morrow and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy and share my opinion of this book.]

I loved so many layers of this book. The rollercoaster ride of being an author. I loved the bits of the actual book too. Overall a very interesting book.

I got an e-arc of this book on NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I won’t say this book is for everyone, but it was a perfect fit for me! All you really need to know going in is that this is a book within a book. It follows the journey of a frustrated author and adjunct professor who decided to write something different for herself. The book within is the Rusted Robot sci-fi story she writes. ( I loved that the deluxe hardback I picked up this week has the rusted robot cover hidden under the dust cover 🤖).

I think the rest is best to go into blind. Both stories converge around themes of authorship, creation, art, AI, publishing, and colonialism all through the main POV of a dissabled author who uses tech to find independence and a Post human robot looking for his humanity.

This is a book that will make you think. It’s a book that will stay with you
It’s a book that will be well worth rereading
And it’s a book that made me cry and gasp out loud by the end.

Masterfully written. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Holy crap this book was amazing! From page one to the very last page it kept me hooked. Definitely highly suggested 10 star read for me

Thank you to Harper Collin’s for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review. Unfortunately, I DNF at 50%. I just couldn’t get into the writing style - it felt very staccato. I also just didn’t enjoy living in Zelu’s head, probably because almost everyone around her sucked. Perhaps it’s cultural, but I didn’t understand why her family was so unsupportive of literally everything she did. I also didn’t understand how her using robotic legs was “shameful” and they were all so against it? The Rusted Robots excerpts I also didn’t enjoy. After giving it at least halfway through the book and I still wasn’t enjoying it, I called it quits.

So when I tell you I immediately took this to my book club like LISTEN UP OKAY and one of our members also immediately put it up for vote for her choice month after I went off about it?? I'm a changed person, I LOVED this book, it's my first Nnedi Okorafor and it won't be my last by far. Listen:

Death of the Author is about Zelu, a paraplegic Nigerian-American woman who, after being fired from her dead-end job as an underpaid, underappreciated adjunct professor ends up writing this book about robots in a post-human world and it is so Human the whole world falls in love and just runs off the rails with it. Along the way, she has to deal with people making all sorts of assumptions about her and her life and her personal wishes, especially when an opportunity comes to her that doesn't normally come to anyone outside the ultra rich.

There's shades of Yellowface (but without the plagiarism) in its critique on basically the "ownership" of public figures by the society that loves (and hates) them and the heavy expectations from those same people that come from being a success -- especially as a woman, especially as a disabled person, especially as a first gen immigrant woman.

Interspersed in Zelu's personal story are chapters of her book and interviews from the people in her life and it's all so rich and full of Yoruba and Igbo culture holding hands directly with the experience of being a child of immigrants who are really high-ranking people in their homeland and all the expectations too that come with THAT...

Thank you to Death of the Author for being the first book this year to set my brain on fire, I'm going to go buy a copy so I can shove it into peoples hands and yap nonstop.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for the eARC!

I liked the layers we got within this book. The story alternates between 3 POVs: Zelu, members of Zelu’s family and my favorite, the Rusted Robots story. I also liked the themes that were explored, themes such as disability, fame, family, dealing with different cultures and AI. Just note going in that this is more literary fiction than sci fi. Overall, good read.

A young woman desperate to find meaning in her life writes a blockbuster book that catapults her to instant stardom. As she navigates the demands of the publishing industry, her disability, and her expectations, she makes choices that have far-reaching consequences for future generations. Author Nnedi Okorafor uses the book-within-a-book technique in her latest novel, an experiment in metafiction that works only to a certain level in Death of the Author.

Nigerian-American adjunct professor Zelu has dreams of writing the next great literary novel, but she’s not making progress with her latest book. It doesn’t help that her large family doesn’t believe her job has any substance. Zelu teaches creative writing, and all her siblings are in more “prestigious” careers like medicine, law, and engineering.

The differences don’t end there. Since a terrible accident when she was 12, Zelu has been bound to a wheelchair. Relatives have made it clear that she’s not a complete woman because of her injury. Zelu does her best to ignore her extended family, but their comments still hurt.

Then learns her latest manuscript has been rejected by every publisher her agent pitched. After that comes word the university has decided to fire her. She’s jobless and directionless, and all this happens while attending her sister’s extravagant wedding in the Caribbean.

In her frustration, Zelu starts pounding out a new story completely different from anything else she’s written before. The novel, Rusted Robots, is science fiction, and Zelu doesn’t even read sci-fi. But the book stars robots who are decidedly Nigerian in culture, which she can relate to, and features them in a world where robots and AI are ruling the planet. The story becomes as much a part of Zelu as her wheelchair: necessary to who she is as a person but a decidedly separate entity.

Her agent sells the book and in a major bidding war, and it becomes a bestseller. Suddenly Zelu is being asked everywhere for her autograph. Enthusiastic fans want the second book right away, and Hollywood comes calling. The novel gets turned into a movie that is as much of a hit as the book itself and takes on a life of its own.

These opportunities bring new life options for Zelu. She meets a scientist from MIT who has been working on experimental technology that can supposedly make her walk again. She also meets a billionaire funding trips to space for civilians. These new avenues, along with other life events, take Zelu from her home in Chicago all the way to Lagos and beyond as she tries to discern her place in the world and what it all means.

Author Nnedi Okorafor gives readers the opportunity to live Zelu’s story as well as the story of Rusted Robots. Chapters alternate between Zelu and Ankara, the protagonist of Zelu’s book. Some readers may wonder why it’s necessary to read Zelu’s novel, which functions in its own setting and on its own timeline. The answer comes at the end of Death of the Author, but the journey to get there feels long and drawn-out at times.

As a protagonist, Zelu doesn’t grow much. She encounters discrimination because of her disability and gets frustrated with her family for their unwillingness to understand her work and her choices. Yet Zelu goes on expecting everyone else to change for her without experiencing any change herself. The book feels, at times, like a series of incidents that are connected simply because they’re happening to Zelu and not a cohesive narrative arc.

By comparison, Rusted Robots is a compelling tale of a robot that must carry dire information to the other robots it knows in order to make an important decision about how to save the world from imminent destruction. Some readers may wonder why Okorafor didn’t just make Rusted Robots her book instead of adding Zelu’s storyline as a frame. The “meta fiction” experience promised by the book’s blurb does eventually materialize, but not all readers may have the patience for the time it takes to get to the last few chapters and that payoff.

The novel is invaluable for sharing the richness of the Nigerian culture, however, especially where funerals are concerned. Those wanting to learn more about that particular culture may find this interesting. Others may want to skip it for the amount of time and patience it takes to get through the novel.

I had mixed feelings about this one. The concept was really interesting, but I kept wanting more of the sci-fi and less of Zelu’s chapters. The family dynamic was well done and added a lot of tension, but I found myself getting frustrated with both Zelu’s actions toward her family and how her family treated her in return.

The robot chapters were definitely favorite, but we just didn't get enough of them. What we did get were really good though and I would love to see more from that world. The ending felt a bit rushed and left me wanting more. Overall, it had its moments, but I came away feeling unsatisfied and a little confused on how I felt about this one...