In March, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) announced the finalists for their Nebula Awards 2024, one of the several most important awards for SF and fantasy. Here’s the short-list of all the nominees who published in 2023. I decided to read all the nominations for best novel. The whole list is a lot of fun, though, and I saw many other types of nominees I might love to blog about–movies, game writing, short fiction, and others. Nevertheless, I’m just going to concentrate on the novels this time.

In this post, I’m reviewing two:

Martha Wells, The Witch King

Wole Talabi, Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

Here they are:

Martha Wells, The Witch King (Tordotcom, 2023)

Wells is most famous for her wildly popular Murderbot series. The Witch King marks her return to fantasy after a long time writing mostly SF. I enjoyed the intrigue, the world-building, and the characters in this novel of demons and empire. The interesting take on gender grabbed me, too. In the end, though, it seemed very over-complicated to me. I see it is listed as book one of a series, so maybe the series needs all these complications and will build on them in future books.

Wole Talabi, Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon (Daw, 2023)

What an amazing novel. This fantasy heist tale crosses time and place, with world-building centered in Nigerian spiritual practices and beliefs–chiefly (I THINK) Yoruba, but check me on this, because I know little about it, only what I learned watching a fantastic production of Wole Soyinka’s masterpiece, Death and the King’s Horseman, and then avidly reading it. So–I’m a pretty ignorant reader, considering everything. But how fascinating Talabi’s novel is! This is what I wish American Gods had been (sorry, not a fan) but wasn’t. This is a very different kind of book, to be fair–very tightly plotted, with an engaging, often humorous tone imagining what it’s like to be part of the Nigerian spirit world AND steal an artifact from The British Museum AND have a beyond-time-and-place love affair (NOT a romantasy, by the way). The cameo appearance of Aleister Crowley reincarnated as a louche teen idol is hilarious–because, he says, being a Satanist is just too ordinary and boring these days. The other characters disdain him as a lightweight. I savored every word of this novel.

SIDE NOTE–colonialism is bad, right, but Nigerian writers in English are such a boon to the language that I am swooning with delight at finding a new one. The great Nigerian writers like Soyinka and Chinua Achebe, younger writers like Chris Abani and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, so many more, many I’m sure I don’t know yet–and now this. I’m not equating all of these books, because they are from different cultures within Nigeria, have different aims and audiences, and meet different levels of taste–but I’m saying the world of reading is a better place for all of these great writers in whatever form and way they choose to do art.