What Sunny Saw In The Flames (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
What a terrific surprise this one was. I don't remember where I came across a mention of it, but I'm very glad I did. How to describe it? An albino African girl, born in America but moved back to Nigeria, discovers she's inherited her grandmother's bloodline and is a Leopard-person, with magical abilities. She begins studies with three new friends, but is thrust into the middle of a crisis in which their foursome must help to save the world from the coming of a big baddie. The characters are wonderful and real, our heroine Sunny is strong (and a kick-ass soccer player!), and the magical world in Africa is magnificent. The creatures, the juju, the elders and teachers, even the supporting characters are great fun. It read almost too quickly, and I can only hope for a sequel. If you enjoy YA fantasy and want something with its own unique flavor and perspective, I can't recommend this highly enough. This was unfortunately not quite as good as I was hoping it would be. There are some good things about this book. The characters are generally interesting. Sunny is a fairly good protagonist and her exploration of being a Leopard person is handled well. I appreciate the way she often gets frustrated with other people being mysterious and cryptic. The other three main characters were also fairly good. None of them are as well developed as they could be, and Chichi and Sasha often end up feeling somewhat too similar, but they provided a good balanced group and they had some interesting powers. The mentor characters were generally a bunch of jerks, and the kids didn't quite rebel against that as much as I would have liked. The other characters were somewhat flat, unfortunately, but then again there isn't a huge amount of time to devote to them in a book of this length. The magic system in general was fairly interesting. There's clearly a lot to it that Okorafor plans to go into in further novels, but what's been shown so far is well done and interesting. It was nice to see a magic system based on African ideas about magic, and I enjoyed seeing how the ways this both differed from and was similar to Western magic in stuff like Harry Potter. Leopard Knocks was a pretty cool society, and it helped a lot with my enjoyment of the novel by pinging my "I wish I could live in this world" senses. The main downside here is the plot. It's largely a fairly basic "young person comes of age while discovering they're part of a secret magical world" story. I have to agree with the people saying it's a Harry Potter read-alike. It did do a fairly good job of being interesting enough to keep me going for most of the novel, although I was generally more interested in what part of the magic world would be revealed next rather than what would happen next to the characters. It kinda falls down towards the end, since the confrontation with the villain isn't built up enough and the confrontation itself is rushed through in comparison to the earlier festival, which took multiple chapters. This book could definitely have benefited from better pacing. The thing that makes the confrontation with the villain especially weird is that he's mentioned early on, and then about half way through the story the kids find out they're going to have to fight him. However, the relatively flimsy excuse that they have to wait for the right time is used to keep the battle for the end of the book. The early Harry Potter books at least required Harry to solve a mystery first and thus explain why it took till the end of the book for him to fight the big bad. Here it's, well, it's just kinda because. Despite my large amount of griping about plot and pacing problems, I did have a pretty fun time with this. It is, after all, the first book in the series, and I liked the world enough that I plan to read the next one once it's out. I loved Okorafor's Who Fears Death, and while this novel didn't live up to my expectations from reading that other work, I remain hopeful that the series will improve as time goes on. Besides, even if the plot is kinda Harry Potter-ish, it's a fantasy novel for kids set in Africa, with African and African American main characters and magic. And that's a pretty great thing to see.
What do You think about What Sunny Saw In The Flames (2013)?
Good book for a 13-15 year old especially a girl. I would have loved this. A bit like Harry Potter
—Beth
West African Harry Potter for Girls. Best ever. I can't wait to read the sequel.
—Jyashika
A delightful book with a well-written, compelling ensemble of characters.
—fancy
