Like her name and her memory that burned away in the fire of that green. Like everyone in the village who was just too close when her pain and anger overcame her – including her family.

Like her parents who sold her little seed for a lot of money. Like the mosquitos that loved to eat her. Whatever that green glow touched fell down dead. When she became angry, or upset, or was in pain, the little girl burned hot and glowed green like poison. And when that seed was stolen from her, that gift bloomed from her like a toxic gas. Whether it was the girl’s care of that seed, or whether it was the seed’s intended purpose all along, the seed gave her a gift – or a curse. A seed that Sankofa before she became Sankofa, back when she was a little girl named Fatima, nurtured and petted and talked to as if it were a person and a confidant and a pet. Once upon a time, when she was an even younger child than she is now, a meteor shower dropped meteorites like little seeds over her father’s shea tree orchard. Sankofa is not, technically, the adopted daughter of the Angel of Death, no matter how many such stories get wrapped around her small, slim person.īut she is death. This is not a fantasy, no matter how much it reads like one. Instead, this is a not-too-distant future of our own world, set in an Africa where jelli-tellies and even-smarter smartphones are coveted and sold and where legends that feel as if they are out of the distant past walk the earth at the same time. This is a fantasy world where anything can, and frequently does, happen.īut Remote Control is not set in a fantasy world. In that fantasy world, Susan is really the adopted granddaughter of Death, the anthropomorphized personification of the Grim Reaper, who rides a pale horse named Binky and likes cats. When I first read the blurb for this book, my first thought was that Sankofa was someone like Susan Sto-Helit in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. Remote Control is the story of Sankofa, the adopted daughter of the Angel of Death. And she walks-alone, except for her fox companion-searching for the object that came from the sky and gave itself to her when the meteors fell and when she was yet unchanged searching for answers.īut is there a greater purpose for Sankofa, now that Death is her constant companion? Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa-a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past. The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. 'She’s the adopted daughter of the Angel of Death. The new book by Nebula and Hugo Award-winner, Nnedi Okorafor. Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Published by Tordotcom on January 19, 2021

Genres: African Futurism, science fiction Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweissįormats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook

Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor