Death of the Author

Two books rolled into one and then, a third book plays a decisive role. I loved the poetic excerpts from "Rusted Robots" and its reflections about friendship and enemies, how immediate existing conflicts keep the robots from fighting an existential threat in an echo of what happened to humanity. The main framing story takes place in the near future and sometimes appears a bit meandering but I felt contained a lot of observations about storytelling and family relationships. There's a big twist towards the end which give the whole book another meta layer. I plan to re-read it at some point.

I really enjoyed most of "Death of the Author"; the book-within-the-book was exciting, especially at the beginning. The main character, Zelu, has a lot of depth and feels like a real person. But the conflict with the family and with others about her reaction to disability is baffling. I know I have my own cultural biases but their reaction to assistive devices and prosthetics feels so out of place that it's hard to stay engrossed. But even with that there's a lot to love in this novel, and it's worth picking up even if you haven't dug in to the more fantasy based books by Okrafor.