Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's The Shadow Speaker is one of those YA novels that could easily slip through the cracks into obscurity, which would be a real shame. Although Locus Magazine included the novel in its Recommended Reading List for 2007, few people in the genre community seem to know about it. Fewer still have read it, but they should. Ejii is a 14-year-old girl in 2070 Niger, several years after a catastrophic event called The Great Change, which both brought magic back into existence and destroyed the barriers separating the five worlds. Ejii is just learning how to use her abilities as a shadow speaker, which include reading minds, seeing long distances, and hearing the voices of shadows. That in itself would be difficult, but she also has to live with half-brothers and half-sisters who despise Ejii and her abilities. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Ejii has been chosen to be groomed as the possible successor to the village leader Jaa ("The Red Queen of Niger"), who brutally executed Ejii's dictatorial father, who ruled in Jaa's absence.
Jaa has the ability to develop Ejii into a young woman who can develop her gifts for the good of her people, to avoid the emergence of future dictators like her father. Yes, Ejii hated him, but she can't avoid the mental images of her father beheaded at the hands of Jaa, the woman she both loathes and admires.
The first half of the book is largely an introspective look at Ejii, her culture and her conflicting emotions. Okorafor-Mbachu does a great job of getting inside the head of a 14-year-old with complex thoughts and emotions, never stooping to the levels of simplicity that fill too many YA novels. Yet it is the second half of the book where the author's imagination really takes off as Ejii meets and rescues a boy named Dikeogu from a sort of demonic sandstorm. It soon becomes clear that Dikeogu is withholding important information about himself, but that's the least of Ejii's worries as her journey to find Jaa becomes filled with strangeness and danger.
At some point, imagination becomes slightly more important than plot, but rest assured, the level of imagination found in The Shadow Speaker is far beyond that of most YA (or for that matter, adult) novels. Large concepts of ecology, family, trust, authority, justice, life and death are dealt with, mostly in subtle ways. This would be the perfect book for teens looking for a challenging read that goes past the boundaries of typical YA fantasy while still telling a great story.
