Book Review: David Mogo, Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

I really really wanted to like this one but I just never felt like it hit its stride or found its rhythm… The cover is gorgeous and the blurb highly compelling. I love the referenced titles (hello Harry Dresden!) and have thoroughly enjoyed the Nigerian magic found in Nnedi Okorafor’s books, so was exceptionally eager to dive into this one. Unfortunately, it did not work for me.

I was struggling almost from the get-go with this story. It’s a great concept and I think has tremendous potential, but it reads awkwardly. There is a strange shift between vernacular and more rigid grammatical speech as the text shifts between the narrative and the dialogue – it made the story feel off pace for me and made me slow down each time I fell into a new strain and reacclimate with the language being deployed. There are also a lot of linguistic references that I didn’t understand that wouldn’t translate or come up in wikipedia on my kindle and it meant a lot of skipping back to the computer to try to understand since many of these were not easy to decode based on context – which also kept pulling me out of the narrative.

The whole rhythm of the book just felt off to me – self-conscious and not quite sure what it wanted to be. It felt like the author was occasionally trying to write his story in the format/style of other authors to ensure the broadest possible audience, and the result was oddly jumpy and uneven in pacing and style. It’s a shame because there’s a very cool core concept here and there are moments where the author seems to find his voice and use it brilliantly – but those moments were somewhat thin on the ground and surrounded by ones in which I struggled to follow things and stay engaged…

My review copy was provided by NetGalley.