This is such a difficult book to rate, because the ending changed a lot of how I think about the book. I haven’t read a lot of books containing a story within a story yet, but I really liked the concept and that kind of meta feeling. In this case, though, the two stories differed quite a lot in quality and in how much I enjoyed them, which eventually made the whole structure work less well for me and I ended up not paying too much attention to one of them.

My main takeaway from this book is that I enjoyed learning something about Nigerian culture. I also thought Zelu was a fascinating character, even though I didn’t particularly like her. I liked following her story as a disabled Black writer, trying to navigate her life between familiar expectations and her own ambitions. The book raises some interesting questions about using technological advancements to deal with disability and about how much public figures should act as role models for society, which gave me some food for thought.

At the same time, Zelu’s storyline also came with quite a few inconsistencies that annoyed me. The biggest problem for me was the embedded science fiction story. Zelu writes a bestselling book that makes her world famous basically overnight, but when we actually get to read parts of it, it is, at best, just… mid? Nothing special and even boring at times. So the robot chapters completely fell flat for me and I eventually stopped paying much attention to them. I did like how some of the themes and issues were mirrored in both stories, though. Zelu getting artificial legs to be able to walk again, for example, kind of turns her into a robot herself and there are other smaller details that connect the two narratives.

I found the exploration of the notion of „Death of the Author“ really interesting, especially the question of whether a piece of fiction can ever exist independently from the person who created it. How much control does an author actually have over their own creation, what other people think and say about them, and how much freedom should others have when adapting that creation into something new? This was when I thought this could actually be a pretty good book.

However, what annoyed me most was that throughout the story, it was repeatedly implied that something had happened to Zelu. There are interviews about the thing she did, but we just don’t get to it. I was waiting for the story to finally reveal this seemingly major plot point, while her narrative became just increasingly repetitive at parts. Finally, the ending turns out pretty dissatisfying. It definitely was an unexpected twist, but ultimately I just thought „wait, that‘s it?“. In the end, it left me pretty disappointed because the ending retroactively took away some of the meaning I had found in other parts of the story and I can’t really appreciate them in the same way anymore.

Part of me would like to reread the book knowing what I know now, but at the same time, I can’t be bothered because I don’t think it’s worth it. So while I could see the potential in the ideas, the Nigerian setting and some of the thematic connections between the two stories, the ending ultimately left me feeling pretty disappointed.