I think I'm going to agree with others and say that this isn't a science fiction book. But it's getting a lot of SF award nominations and it contains a SF novel so I guess that's close enough. The lead character (Zelu) writes a novel that touches a nerve and is acclaimed as one of the best novels ever, but the fact that it is a SF novel, while often repeated, does not seem to be important to the book's success.
All that said, I think this is my favorite book by this author. There's a whole lot going on in here, and while it seems to lose some folks I think it is well managed. The SF novel within a novel (Rusted Robots) manages to be autobiographical about Zelu, which is I think quite an achievement.The book is very forthrightly and consciously African, and its Africanness is an important element of the story. Maybe I should say it's Nigerian, specifically upper-class Nigerian including the diaspora (Zelu is Nigerian-American). It's a perspective we don't see that much of in English language SF, so it's refreshing. Okorafor's dialog is direct to the point of awkwardness sometimes, and this really comes through in the depiction of the family relationships. But it gets less awkward with every book she writes. Good stuff.
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