Skip to main content

Nnedi Okorafor: Death of the Author

 This was a book club book for my teacher book club. I was initially kind of excited to read it because the title is intriguing and it's science fiction.

Death of the Author follows the story of wheelchair-bound Zelu. At the start of the book, Zelu is an unsuccessful author and university professor. She loses her creative writing teaching position due to her arrogance and insensitive comments toward some of her students. In her frustration and desperation, she sits down and pounds out a novel like nothing she's ever tried to write before: Rusted Robots, a sci-fi novel about robots after humanity. The book is wildly successful and propels her into fame.

I really don't know where to start with this book. For one, I found the main character, Zelu, to be utterly intolerable. Nothing was ever her fault, and everything was always someone else's fault. Everyone was always judging her, and she was overly concerned about what everyone might have been thinking of her. I felt that she thought the entire world revolved around her. She was vain, arrogant, and a jerk to almost everyone she met. She was inconsiderate of people who admired her, rude to her family, and I honestly felt that she deserved to lose her university job after what she said to her students. Most of my issues with this novel really stem from Zelu's character, and her lack of ability to have empathy for anyone else.

The plot itself was disjointed, and got progressively more annoying as the novel went on. Zelu whines about literally everything. She doesn't listen to anyone, and her arrogance nearly gets her killed. Which I get, is part of the point of that part of the novel. Then she gets pregnant and goes to space without telling anyone about the baby. I really hated that part. I don't overly mind characters getting pregnant or being pregnant (I know this is not a popular trope). I think it can be done well, in certain areas. Not this one though. It was just another display of Zelu's self-centeredness. Along with this idea, there are "interviews" from Zelu's family, supposedly done by a journalist. I thought this journalist and these interviews would play a role in the outcome of the story, but they didn't. I almost feel like this was supposed to be a different story than what ended up coming out.

Then there's the Rusted Robots storyline. I thought the story was kind of dumb in the way it was written. Generic writing, very little showing - mostly just telling, and it honestly didn't hold my interest. The twist at the end with the robot supposedly writing the story was dumb. It felt like a cop-out of an ending.

I didn't love the character development. There was very little until the last 50 pages, and it seemed kind of trite in the end.

I had a really hard time finding anything I liked about the book. I can't tell you how many times I nearly just put it down because I couldn't stand the main character at all.

I rated this ⭐⭐



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Brene Brown: Daring Greatly

Brene Brown is one of my favorite TED speakers of all time. I have listened to her TED talks numerous times and used them in my classroom each year. I love her message: that we can't have success, innovation, change, and creativity without first having vulnerability. I love that she is seeking to demystify vulnerability and teach what shame is and how it destroys our ability to accept ourselves and others. I am not normally into the self-help kind of books, but of the books I've read this year, this is one of my favorites! Daring Greatly  by Brene Brown discusses the concepts of shame and vulnerability and how we need vulnerability, but not shame. She gives strategies for combating shame and becoming "shame resilient." She gives strategies to use as parents, teachers, friends, and spouses. For one thing, I love Dr. Brown's Texan accent (she narrates the audiobook herself! 💗). Her voice and personality are all throughout this book. She is not afraid to use persona...
Post a Comment
Read more

Brandon Sanderson: The Lost Metal - Wax & Wayne (Mistborn Era 2) Book 4

 I finally finished Mistborn era 2! I loved this series so much (though I think I love era 1 the most still). This story was an incredible addition to Scadrial's story. In this final installment, we pick up in Elendel at a time of great uncertainty. The outer cities are threatening war, their tentative alliance with the Malwish is falling apart over the Bands of Mourning, and Wax is still in the middle of all of it. Now serving on the senate, Wax is desperately trying to help the Elendel nobles maintain peace while hunting the Set. Unsuccessful thus far at locating his sister, the leader of the Set, Wax is still trying to uncover her plans. Can Wax, Marasi, and Wayne uncover the Set's plans before the invasion of Trell crushes Scadrial? This was a fitting conclusion for Mistborn's second era. I loved the character development we saw in each of the characters: Marasi, Wax, Wayne, and Steris. I love the involvement of some era 1 characters (one who I am not going to spoil), a...
Post a Comment
Read more

2022 Reading in Review

 I thought it might be fun to look at my reading challenge from last year and look at what I enjoyed the most. I picked my top 5 favorite books from 2022 to highlight one more time. Choosing only five was actually more difficult than I imagined, since I had a lot of favorites. It was also hard to rank them if I'm completely honest, but here is my list! #5 - The Girl Who Drank the Moon  by Kelly Barnhill I loved this book. I loved the whimsical storytelling style and the plot. I loved the characters and how they were developed. I loved how the author carefully crafted the foreshadowing and how she carefully guided you through the mystery of Xan's memories. Overall, this book was so well written. Even though it was a middle grade book, I found myself unable to put it down. #4 - I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys If you've followed my blog, then you probably know that I don't usually care much for Ruta Septys's writing. It's not that I dislike the stories she tells,...
Post a Comment
Read more