Who Fears Death?

This is a messed up book. Set in the post-apocalyptic Africa things are not cool. Actually things are not all that cool now. This book is pretty dark with "adult themes" and not in a good way. In fact there are so many creepy things in here they are like a who's who of comedy killers. Unless you're Louis C.K. it's pretty hard to joke about child soldiers, genocide and female genital circumcision. I mean, that is above my pay grade, for real.  At least in this book's future there are bad wizards and good wizards. Ok, ok....that we can work with....

I really wanted to like this book because it's from a different perspective and new author. The first part is a typical hero myth even if it's super creepy but I was ok. Our girl wizard is named Onyesanwu, who is destined to be a hero....except in the second half of the book she grows up to be kind of a jerk. I have no idea if the author wants us to like her or not. Her boyfriend is a jerk, her friends at times are jerks, her teacher is a Super jerk, the villagers...you guessed it...jerks. She meets some nice sand people who put up with her diva behavior. For example, Onye doesn't want eat some food offered to her because it got "mixed together" so her boyfriend gets her some more...I'm like you are in travelling for months in a desert and these nice people are giving you food--witch, please.

The plot goes all over the place at the end with a bizarre ending so I'm not sure I can recommend this book. I noticed that she let Patrick Rothfuss read an early draft and I found that amusing because his hero In the Name of the Wind is also kind of a jerk (I liked his story and his hero better but he refuses to finish the trilogy--sigh). Apparently I like my heroes to be simple hobbit-like folk, you know we're going to save the world but there is no need to: A) not to be civilized and B) stop and have nice snacks.

This is the perfect name of a cocktail to go with this book--Blood and Sand Cocktail: Fill a cocktail shaker with 3/4 ounce of the following 4 ingredients: Scotch, sweet vermouth, Cherry Heering and orange juice. Shake and strain and pour into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with an orange peel.