I read this probably ten years ago, and I re-read it to prepare for teaching a first-year seminar. This is an ideal example of "YA lit" that defies all the negative connotations of those who try to dismiss works in that genre.

Ejii's story is rough and complex and far from simple. She and her peers are dealing with a shifting world that their parents' generation has corrupted as they have kicked crisis after crisis down the road . Ejii has to fight against the self that generation has worked hard to make her into. She has to sift through the million negative messages about the world and who she is, and she has to shed her own child's view of people and events.

The world Okorafor builds is beautiful and strange and full of possibility.