★★★☆☆
(African High Fantasy) The narrator delivers dead bodies to the Earth which sometimes spits them back. He/she thinks something is not quite right, but can’t quite figure it out. (5,401 words; Time: 18m)
"The Fifth Day," by Tochi Onyebuchi [bio] (edited by Katharine Duckett), appeared in Uncanny Magazine issue 30, published on September 3, 2019.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Review: 2019.530 (A Word for Authors)
Pro: The mention in the story of “ogbanje” (a Igbo word meaning “evil spirit”) tells us this the story is taking place in what’s now Nigeria (or else in a secondary world patterned after it).
Some time in the past, the narrator attempted to raise his/her child from the dead and was cursed for the attempt. (I think.) This is the story of how he/she broke the curse but still had to live with his/her pain at the loss of the child.
Con: The early parts of this story are so confusing that it was painful to read, and the explanation at the end doesn’t follow naturally from what went before.
Other Reviews: Search Web
Tochi Onyebuchi Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
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Pro: The mention in the story of “ogbanje” (a Igbo word meaning “evil spirit”) tells us this the story is taking place in what’s now Nigeria (or else in a secondary world patterned after it).
Some time in the past, the narrator attempted to raise his/her child from the dead and was cursed for the attempt. (I think.) This is the story of how he/she broke the curse but still had to live with his/her pain at the loss of the child.
Con: The early parts of this story are so confusing that it was painful to read, and the explanation at the end doesn’t follow naturally from what went before.
Other Reviews: Search Web
Tochi Onyebuchi Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
Author blog you have linked is now private. Here is his public page:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.tochionyebuchi.com/