Akata Witch

From the Publisher:

    Sunny Nwazue lives in Nigeria, but she was born in New York City. Her features are West African, but she's albino. She's a terrific athlete, but can't go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits in. And then she discovers something amazing—she is a "free agent" with latent magical power. And she has a lot of catching up to do. 
      Soon she's part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But as she’s finding her footing, Sunny and her friends are asked by the magical authorities to help track down a career criminal who knows magic, too. Will their training be enough to help them combat a threat whose powers greatly outnumber theirs? 
      World Fantasy Award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor blends magic and adventure to create a lush world. Her writing has been called “stunning” by The New York Times and her fans include Neil Gaiman, Rick Riordan, John Green, Ursula K. Le Guin, and many more! 

My Thoughts:

Nnedi Okorafor is the fantasy, science fiction writer who uses minority YA characters and weaves in Indigenous technology and magic (in this case juju). She is the author of the Binti trilogy that is another girl power Afropolitan character in a space and ethnic/race drama. Even in her fantasy world there is still hegemony, racial cleansing, colonization and oppression which makes for an exciting trilogy.

But this is about this book/series. It has been called the African Harry Potter, and while I can see that, what I was missing and wanted to see was the actual schooling, studying and struggle of these young magicians (similar to what Rowling did in Sorcerer's Stone). There was not enough time spent on their learning together. I also wanted to see the mentor's come in and do more with the young students.

I think it has potential to be good. I was just missing some of the work on character development so that these characters could be more rounded and I could root for them. 

In other words, it was ok. I will definitely read the next one, but I am going back to the Folk of Air series first.