One Way Witch
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- ¥1,700
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- ¥1,700
発行者による作品情報
Set in the universe Africanfuturist luminary Nnedi Okorafor first introduced in the World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death, One Way Witch is the second in the She Who Knows trilogy
The world has forgotten Onyesonwu.
As a teen, Najeeba learned to become the beast of wind, fire and dust: the kponyungo. When that took too much from her, including the life of her father, she let it all go, and for a time, she was happy — until only a few years later, when the small, normal life she’d built was violently destroyed.
Now in her forties and years beyond the death of her second husband, Najeeba has just lost her beloved daughter. Onyesonwu saved the world. Najeeba knows this well, but the world does not. This is how the juju her daughter evoked works. One other person who remembers is Onyesonwu’s teacher Aro, a harsh and hard-headed sorcerer. Najeeba has decided to ask him to teach her the Mystic Points, the powerful heart of sorcery. There is something awful Najeeba needs to kill and the Mystic Points are the only way. Najeeba is truly her daughter’s mother.
When Aro agrees to help, Najeeba is at last ready to forge her future. But first, she must confront her past — for certain memories cannot lie in unmarked graves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Skipping ahead many years from the events of She Who Knows, Nebula Award winner Okorafor picks up heroine Najeeba's life after the loss of her daughter, Onyesonwu. After not using her spiritual powers for the majority of her adult life, Najeeba embraces her self-taught ability to transform into a kponyungo, a mystical creature, in middle age. Through magic, she discovers that, though Onyesonwu has erased the history of Okeke slavery and genocide from the land, some evils remain. Among them is the Cleanser, a mysterious figure who takes young girls from Najeeba's hometown and returns them strange and altered. To kill him, Najeeba knows she'll need to improve her kponyungo abilities and turns to her daughter's old teacher, the sorcerer Aro. So begins her journey to become a full-fledged witch, all the while dealing with grief, processing her trauma, and carrying the weight of being one of the only souls left that remembers the old history of Okeke. Okorafor's straightforward and succinct prose lays bare Najeeba's turmoil and struggles alongside the pride and strength of her witching accomplishments. The plotting is loose, setting things up for book three more than telling a self-contained story. Still, the strength of the world, and the heroine, makes this one shine.
