Lagoon

By: Nnedi Okorafor

Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh, Ben Onwukwe

Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's Summary

Three strangers, each isolated by his or her own problems: Adaora, the marine biologist. Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa. Agu, the troubled soldier. Wandering Bar Beach in Lagos, Nigeria's legendary mega-city, they're more alone than they've ever been before. But when something like a meteorite plunges into the ocean and a tidal wave overcomes them, these three people will find themselves bound together in ways they could never imagine.

Together with Ayodele, a visitor from beyond the stars, they must race through Lagos and against time itself in order to save the city, the world...and themselves.

'There was no time to flee. No time to turn. No time to shriek. And there was no pain. It was like being thrown into the stars.'

©2014 Nnedi Okorafor (P)2014 Hodder & Stoughton

Critic Reviews

Praise for Who Fears Death:

"A fantastical, magical blend of grand storytelling" (Publishers Weekly)
"Beautifully written, this is dystopian fantasy at its very best" (Library Journal Review)
"Both wondrously magical and terribly realistic." (Washington Post)

Colorful magic realist science fiction

There aren't a lot of sci-fi/fantasy writers who use Africa as a primary setting, but Nnedi Okorafor is a noteworthy voice in this small subgenre. I enjoyed 2010's post-apocalypse coming-of-age, Who Fears Death, though I found the plot a little disjointed. Lagoon, her most recent work, shows her strengthening her skills as a writer and storyteller.

Here, when aliens come to set up a new home on Earth, they don't pick New York, London, or Tokyo, but land their ship in the ocean near Lagos, Nigeria, flooding the coast. Immediately, their technology, which is advanced to the point of near-magic, begins to wreak changes on the local marine life. For reasons that don't become clear until later, three people, strangers to each other, a marine biologist named Adaora, a popular Ghanaian rapper named Anthony, and a soldier named Agu, are attracted to the beach. A wave pulls them all into the water, and some time later, they return with a fourth individual, an ambassador from the aliens who has taken human form.

At this point, had the story been set in the US, the government would have swooped in, set up a tight military cordon and whisked away the visitor. But, this is Nigeria. Instead, Adaora conducts a few tests, footage ends up on the internet, and different parties, from a charlatan witch-hunting preacher to some enterprising kidnappers to a unit of trigger-happy soldiers, converge on the scene. Meanwhile, the strange events unleash religious fervor, rioting, and other chaos throughout Lagos. The aliens, like gods, can be benevolent in their way, but also seem to be judging humanity and are dangerous when provoked.

This definitely isn't conventional sci-fi. There are some strong mystical elements to the story, which lend it, at times, a magic realist flavor reminiscent of Salman Rushdie. The aliens, it seems, have awakened old spirits and powers lurking just beneath the skin of Lagos (including a man-eating road!). I very much enjoyed the colorful writing and the honesty about Nigeria's conflicted, multifaceted personality that emerged in the book's many short vignettes, each from the perspective of a different denizen of the city. Okorafor's creativity especially shines in the sequences devoted to animals changed by the aliens' energies. Audiobook narrators, Adjoa Andoh and Ben Onwukwe, who do an astonishing range of accents, demonstrate just how much the spoken-word experience can enhance a book.

It's not that there weren't annoyances, though. The central plot, which concerned the main characters' mission to get through the chaos to meet up with Nigeria's ailing president, gets a little tedious in its one-thing-after-another action overload. Also, the author over-relies on the device of having many of her characters coincidentally know other characters who are important to the story. And, as much as I loved the voice actors, some of their accent were incomprehensible to me. The pidgin English dialect was like listening to an amped-up Jar Jar Binks.

Still, the overall theme of human worthiness of redemption, in the face of our many abuses of nature and one other, resonated for me. Okorafor is one to keep an eye on. The same (well, ear) goes for Andoh and Onwukwe.

A "big picture" novel

I don't know if it is coincidence or a trand for SFF, but lately I've read several books that tell a story from a cross-section perspective. There isn't just one or two protagonists who tell their story, though there typically is a few characters who are protagonists, but sections told from the perspective of minor characters and sometimes tangential characters (i.e. people whose story crosses the story being told at only one point). I'm not sure how to feel about this. On the one one hand it can be wonderful to have a new perspective on an event. It also keeps the focus on the themes and the broad strokes of a story rather than on an individual character's fate. On the other, it can be disorienting and make it difficult to connect with a book. After all, humans are social and we connect most easily to people/characters instead of events, themes, and places.

Lagoon falls on the end of the spectrum where this is a (mostly) effective technique. We follow three humans and an alien for most of the book as they go from first contact on a beach to worldwide exposure on YouTube. But the story isn't really about those characters or even the aliens, it's about Lagos and how it reacts to extraordinary circumstances. It isn't about how any individual behaved, it is about how a city full of people behaved. So getting a larger cross-section of perspectives made sense and worked once I had gotten to the point in the book where I realized that those side stories were equally important to the point of the book as the main characters. It's that transition in my own mind needing to be made that made this book less enjoyable than if I had understood from the beginning. I might have seen some of the less connected characters early on less as digressions and more as mosaic tiles.

In all, I enjoyed the book more when it was finished than I enjoyed listening to it in some of the middle parts, but will definitely be picking up more books by this author. Now that I know to go into her books with fewer expectations about pacing and structure, I think I will enjoy them more.

As far as the narrators, they do a great job only just falling short of perfect. Their minor character voices tended to be very similar and shrill, but I got used to it and enjoyed the narration overall.

Lagos, where nothing works and everything happens

Lagoon By Nnedi Okorafor is the World Fantasy Award winning author’s first novel for adults since 2010′s Who Fears Death. Narrated By Ben Onwukwe (known for his role in London’s Burning) and Adjoa Andoh (known for her roles in Dr. Who and EastEnders) for Hodder & Stoughton, the audiobook is really well done. Onwukwe handles most of the mainline narration, with Andoh providing the introduction and filling in for a few vignettes as well as providing all of the female voices “inline” with Onwukwe’s reading. Both narrators display quite a range, from multiple “American” accents to diverse African (Nigeria, Ghana, pidgin English) to British ex-pats and more; from simple dialogue to guttural screams, both actors give fantastic performances. At first, the “inline” insertions are a bit jarring, but as the audiobook progresses it becomes more natural and seamless to the ear. Inspired by “Wizard of the Crow, Under the Dome (the novel), Nollywood movies, and District 9″, Lagoon is a story of first alien contact, Lagos, Nigeria, and (principle among the protagonists) Adaora, a marine biologist. Okorafor’s aliens are different — upon high-magnification examination, Adaora discovers that they are not composed of cellular material at all, but rather billions of tiny metallic crystals — who can shapeshift, read thoughts, and are quite serious when they say that they bring “change” — a keyword refrain that I read as an homage to Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Written with a cinematic sensibility, along with the primary thrust of the story (Adaora, rapper Anthony, and soldier Agu trying desperately amidst the chaos of rioting Lagos to bring alien ambassador Ayodele together with the popular but ineffective Nigerian president) there are many, many sub-plots afoot, from a “born-again” church’s bishop hoping to use Ayodele, to small-time 419 scammers preparing to upgrade to kidnapping, to (as is perhaps a defining characteristic of Okorafor’s work to date) the intersection of science fiction and mythology: ghosts, gods, trees, animals, the ocean itself. Highly recommended.

InterestingYet Muddied Waters

There were some quite interesting and compelling parts to this novel... There were also some very uninteresting, poorly contrived, and disjointed aspects as well... The narration was good, although some of the accenting sounded like Pepe` le Pew at times, and others sounded like something out of the Mos Isley cantina;) The character construction and development was a bit haphazard and disconnected... The superpowers angle seemed a bit juvenile for truly thoughtful speculative fiction... I thought the prologues were fantastically done, and the story picked up after the first half of the book... It was hard slogging prior to that point...The weaving in of cultural myths was attention catching, but wasn't used to full effect...I found myself smiling a few times at the inferences to "The Gods Must Be Crazy" - TheWater is Life vehicle was interesting, but could have been more in depth... The action focused on the dirt dwellers, and the story might have had more punch if the water dwellers were gone into a bit more... They really only played a real role until the latter stages of the story...It was an average work, and I was expecting something a bit grander based upon reviews...

Narrator accent and lingo distracting

Audible audiobook version- i couldn’t get past the narration which i fount distracting, sometimes incomprehensible, preventing me from becoming immersed in story. I just keep thinking about the narrators. Maybe my hearing is bad. I understand how an accent and dialogue could add flavor to a story. For me, in this case, animated narration didn’t help.

Great narrators keep story afloat

This story includes some creative concepts, and the unique setting gives you a sense of what life in Nigeria would be like. However, characters felt flat despite stellar performances by the voice actors. To me, it felt like an action movie without much emotional depth or character development. If you're just after a lightweight, entertaining story, give this a shot. If you want something deeper, you might want to look elsewhere.

What if the UFOs landed in Nigeria?

Things I liked: Setting an alien invasion in Lagos Nigeria, all the characters are Africans (with a couple of African-Americans thrown in), the way animals just accept the changes introduced by the aliens vs the humans rejecting the aliens. I really loved the use of language, particularly the passages in Pidgin English. Even though it was sometimes hard to understand, it really grounded the book and made the characters feel very real. I also liked the lyrical way the author wrote in the voices of the animals as in the following two passages (the first is from the point of view of a bat, the second is a spider). Also, I have to say, this book had some of the best cover art ever.

“She flies higher than she’s ever flown before, maybe she is trying to leave the earth. She isn’t sure, she isn’t thinking about it. She’s far in her mind, deep in her own thoughts, the air on her wings feels amazing, she is swimming, rolling through the air as if it’s water. She lifts her head as she flies and lets out a series of loud chirps. And that’s when she sees it. The largest bat ever. Flying faster than any hawk or eagle or owl, roaring like some sort of monster. She doesn’t know the human word ‘dragon’ otherwise she would call it that. There is no time to flee. No time to turn. No time to shriek, and no pain. It is like being thrown into the stars.”

“I am the unseen. For centuries I have been here, beneath this great city, this metropolis. I know your language. I know all languages. . . . My cave is broad and cool. The sun cannot send its heat down here. The damp soil is rich and fragrant. I turn softly on my back and place my eight legs to the cave ceiling. Then, I listen. I am the spider. I see sound. I feel taste. I hear touch. I spin this story. This is the story I’ve spun.”

I was a bit confused when several new characters were introduced quite late in the book and they didn’t seem at all integral to the plot. Also I sometimes found it hard to understand what was motivating some of the characters. I wish the animals’ point-of-view had come into the book more earlier, more frequently, and with a bit more explanation; I think that would have given the book more context.

[I listened to this as an audio book performed by Adjoa Andoh and Ben Onwukwe. They did a fantastic job! The accents they used made it easy to differentiate between the different characters, as did the fact that the male narrator read the male lines and the female narrator read the female lines]

Amazing

I’m so glad I picked this up. Her short stories are always excellent but this was sooo good and narrated really excellently to boot.

ehhh okay

I thought I was a neat idea, the story is pretty interesting. It was just too diluted by the end, I was struggling to want to finish. I love accented narrators and these guys were good except I think it was called pigeon English, those parts I just really couldn't understand what they were saying like at all but it was just a chapter here or there of that. Another thing that made it hard for me, at least at the beginning, was the switching between male and female voices, I just don't think that was a good idea. )= honestly I don't think I would reread this book

Had high hopes

Good concept but the story was choppy, I couldn't connect with the characters. They were too 2 dimensional, no depth.

Decent

The story started off well, seemed very engaging and mysterious but what should've have been a great afro-scifi got lost amongst the multiple narrators. Perhaps i lost focus somewhere in this recording because of that, so it might be better to read this story than to listen to it.

Inventive and magical science fiction

I was first attracted to Lagoon on Audible by the dramatic cover art which incorporates a myriad of sea creatures into the title word. The book is expertly narrated by Adjoa Andoh and Ben Onwukwe who between them portray many Lagos residents, a smattering of aliens, and also several magical beings from Nigerian folklore. From her initial chapter, spoken as a swordfish who is vandalising an oil pipeline, Okorafor doesn't let up for a minute. The science fiction storyline of alien invasion is fairly standard, but her inventiveness and understanding of human nature makes Lagoon a cut above the norm. I could easily visualise each location from their detailed descriptions and would love for it to be possible to visit that beautiful underwater world! There are some fabulously memorable characters populating this frightened yet vibrant Lagos. Father Oke is great and so true! I sympathised with poor overlooked Philo and even Adaora's husband Chris is stuck in an all too understandable predicament. Plus I don't think I've ever felt sorry for a tarantula before! I did initially have trouble keeping up with the pidgin english, but could generally work out enough to get the gist without having to replay the sentences. The environmentalism and the message of change are nicely done without being preachy and I liked the unusual ending. Nice touch.

Enjoyable sci-fi yarn

This science fantasy blends magic and old gods with alien first contact. While gritty in places, and exploring the best and worst of human behaviour the unlikely heroes are able to prevail.

A MASTERPIECE OF DESPERATIOIN, MAGINATION AND HOPE

With the grim and gritty everyday life of Lagos, Nigeria as a background we get a real insight into the souls of its inhabitants and its ravaged land. Tales of desperation, poverty, hard work,achievement, superstition, religious strife, environmental and societal ruin are woven together and expressed with supreme skill. How could all this this be fixed? The imagination of the author in arriving at a solution for Lagos, humanity, and the world is unbounded. Why have I not already seen the film of this truly magical story? The answer is skilfully included. Aliens, Africa, altruism, mysticism, the ocean, gaia personified. I loved this book.

It Was Entertaining

Overall I really enjoyed it, there were a few characters that I felt didn't make sense in the grand scheme of the story. As much as I enjoyed it, I can't help feeling that the traditional folklore was expanded enough to understand what role it played with the aliens integrating themselves into Lagos.
Got a feeling this story has only just begun.

Sublime

Loved it. Fantastic job by the narrators who were just outstanding! My first foray into Afrofuturism and it was a treat!

Worst Pile of Turd I've Ever Heard

So bad. Like worse than a 10 year olds drug feuled dream. No science at all. Plot holes galore. Random characters who don't advance the story. Magic. Written by someone who has no idea how computers work. No idea of how human emotions work. I've read better stories from primary school kids. Turd. Good voice actors.

couldn't go through first 30min

readers are acting too much, couldn't understand what they were saying. very poor experience

this book filled me with warmth,

in words of the spider IT'S A GOOD STORY.
We are not human with stories.

Excellent Afro-Futurist story

What a fantastic performance from the two narrators. It worked very well with the two of them. This Afro-Futurist story was well spun and drew me in. I also felt I learnt new things about Nigeria and the city of Lagos.