Travel Documents 86: War Girls
Genre: Near Future, dystopian, climate change fiction, interpersonal relationships, social change, civil war
The Dust Cover Copy
Two sisters are torn apart by war and must fight their way back to each other in a futuristic, Black Panther-inspired Nigeria.
The year is 2172. Climate change and nuclear disasters have rendered much of earth unlivable. Only the lucky ones have escaped to space colonies in the sky.
In a war-torn Nigeria, battles are fought using flying, deadly mechs, and soldiers are outfitted with bionic limbs and artificial organs meant to protect them from the harsh, radiation-heavy climate. Across the nation, as the years-long civil war wages on, survival becomes the only way of life.
Two sisters, Onyii and Ify, dream of more. Their lives have been marked by violence and political unrest. Still, they dream of peace, of hope, of a future together.
And they're willing to fight an entire war to get there.
Acclaimed author Tochi Onyebuchi has written an immersive, action-packed, deeply personal novel perfect for fans of Nnedi Okorafor, Marie Lu, and Paolo Bacigalupi.
The Scene
Worldbuilding
In a lushly tactile future Africa that feels as if it jumps off the page, Onyebuchi has created a world that’s both so close you can touch it and a place outside our understanding of a nice, normal life. In this work, Onyebuchi has imagined what it could look like if the Nigerian Civil War (also known as the Biafran War and the Nigerian-Biafran War) of 1967 flared up again in the future. There are new weapons and new dangers—irradiated land and the animals that have mutated in that vicious radiation—but there are still the same old animosities, the same viciousness that only closely related groups can have when they turn on one another, and the same wounds on every side. Into this work the author has woven tomorrow’s technology with yesterday’s battle-scars, creating a painfully realized world where there are battle-mechs, but there are also child soldiers carrying guns as big as they are. (side note, mecha-anime fans, strap in for an African twist on the genre at its best)
For African readers, it is a bittersweet dive into the blended past and possibilities. For Western readers, it’s a wonderful chance to see a culture through its own eyes, in a story not written for our gaze or with our sensibilities in mind. We need more of this to help us learn, and I personally learn best through connecting with people’s lived experience in story, so this was an amazing bonus for me in the work.
It is a heartbreakingly realized world, full of people that are neither wrong nor right, human nor machine. And every one of them is touched by warfare.
The Crowd
Characterization
The story revolves around a band of sisters; war-girls, the young women born into and brought up in conflict. All they know is the war, and the hope that one day they will proudly call themselves Biafran.
The tale centers most closely on elder sister Onyii and younger sister Ify, but around them are their band, their history, their hopes, and the blood on their hands. The world they are born into is not kind, and it will twist and bend them nearly to breaking point again and again, along with everyone around them. So many people in this story make all the wrong choices, but the art of the author is in leading you to the same headspace as the character, that place where the unbelievable becomes the only option. Terrible choices are made on all sides, with terrible costs. But in writing these sisters and their stubborn refusal to give in to circumstance, the author showcases the sheer, stubborn strength of the human soul. It is our ability to sit in the darkest night and say ‘fine, I’ll be patient’ that shines in this work.
The Lingo
Writing Style
Starkly beautiful as a throwing knife, this story draws you in with description, snares you with interpersonal interaction, and sears you with the experiences of war, destitution, desolation and trauma in its pages. But you are renewed coming through these flames, and wiser for it.
As a side note, I listened to the audiobook, and the performance is top-notch
The Moves
Plot
I give this one 4 out of 5 plot-wise, mainly for the ending. Now, this is a bit subjective, but bear with me. I have a soft spot for Marvel movies. But the big set-piece battle is usually when I hit the restroom or grab a snack. I know I’m not going to miss much plot-wise, and the fast-moving ‘then this thing’ scenes tend to pale for me pretty quickly. That was the last fourth of this book, plotwise. It flipped over—no spoilers, but for solid reasons—from an intricate interpersonal tale to a slog of shoot’em’up and Mad-Max scenes. At the time, I was scrubbing out the bathroom so I didn’t mind, but if I had been sitting with a physical book I would have skipped some pages to get to the interesting stuff at the very end.
Overall Rating
A viscerally evocative tale of war, despair, redemption, and the price a country pays in blood for its conflicts.