Nigerien American authorNnedi Okoraforis a namefantasy fans are well familiar with — she ’s won Hugo , Nebula , World Fantasy , Locus , and Lodestar Awards — and an even grownup hearing awaits , since herWho Fears Deathis being produce into an HBO series . In November , she ’ll release Like Thunder , the sequel to Shadow Speaker in her Desert Magician ’s Duology . io9 has a sneak trailer to partake in today !
Here ’s what Like Thunder is about :
This brand - new sequel to Nnedi Okorafor ’s Shadow Speaker contains the powerful prose and compelling tale that have made Nnedi Okorafor a star of the literary science fiction and phantasy distance and put her at the forefront of Africanfuturist fiction
Image: DAW
Niger , West Africa , 2077
receive back . This second volume is a breathtaking report that tangle across the sands of the Sahara , pilot up to the peaks of the Aïr Mountains , cartwheel into a wild megacity — you get the melodic theme .
I am the Desert Magician ; I fetch weewee where there is none .
Image: DAW
This volume begins with Dikéogu Obidimkpa slowly losing his psyche . Yes , that son who can lend rainfall just by thinking about it is having some … egress . twelvemonth ago , Dikéogu went on an epic journey to save Earth with the vestige speaker fille , Ejii Ubaid , who became his skillful admirer . When it was all over , they went their separate ways , but now he ’s pick up their pursuance never really ended at all .
So Dikéogu , more sinewy than ever , reunites with Ejii . He records this story as an audiofile , hoping it will help oneself him keep his saneness or at least give him something to leave behind . Smart kid , but it wo n’t knead — or will it ?
I can say you this : it wo n’t be like before . Our rainmaker and shadow speaker unit have changed . And after this , nothing will ever be the same again .
As they say , ‘ Onye amaro ebe nmili si bido mabaya ama ama onye nyelu ya akwa oji welu ficha aru . ’
Or , ‘ If you do not remember where the rainfall started to beat you , you will not remember who throw you the towel with which to dry your body . ’
Here ’s the cover , gain its debut here on io9 ; the cover example is by Greg Ruth , and the cover song design is by Jim Tierney . An excerpt from Like Thunder follows .
Translating . . .
Dikéogu Audio File Seriesbegun April 8 , 2074Current positioning : Unknown Region , NigerWeather : 36o degree centigrade ( 98o F ) , N.I.U.F. ( Not include Unpredictable Factors )
This audio file cabinet has been automatically translate from the Igbo voice communication .
Rainmaker
My name is Dikéogu Obidimkpa . I am a rainmaker . bear in Nigeria but made elsewhere . The tattoo on my face is red and white , the colour of Shango , god of hell dust and lightning . My tattoo turned those colour on its own . It used to be blue . Shango ’s colors suit me substantially .
I prescribe this account of all that happened after everything has happened . But it ’s all still happening . You ’ll interpret as you listen . For me , stories never end . I record these specific files that I title “ Rainmaker ” when I was or am hold an peculiarly camelshit type of daytime . When it ’s gruelling to think , when I feel like I ’ll just blow aside or suck away . Making these files help . Sort of . In a pedigree - letting kind of way . So if I vocalize unlike in “ rainmaker ” single file , you ’ll read why .
A storm came today . It blew in out of nowhere , but I knew it was total . I always cognize when a tempest is come . It snap palm Tree like matchsticks . Threw a scooter like a pocket of stockfish . It hook the moxie and grass like Noah ’s flowage . It wash rooftops . It was noisy and glorious .
But I spend that half hour on the turd floor of this small house with all the lizard , spider , and centipede . No one could talk to me . No one could bear on me . Only Gambo would have understood .
When I close up my eye , I saw vast rolled hoar clouds . I could smell the acres ’s fragrance arise up just before the rain came . I could smack the clouds as lightning ionized water vaporisation . I could feel the air pressure fall and then go up .
I was splash with millions of raindrops . I could feel what could have been . The wipeout . The power . I could listen the pelting and thunder , out of doors . First the line of gab of grit on grass and leaves and then the splash of clay . The howl of idle words .
And when I open my eyes , I wanted to flee . But I could n’t . Not anymore . I am in fear ’s chasm . Okay , possibly Ejii would understand , too .
My helping hand tremble just thinking about it . I ca n’t exchange what I am . I am a rainmaker , but mostly it rained on me . Don’t like to be me . Or to be able to do what I do . What I can do can be done to me when the sky merely leave it .
CHAPTER 1Better Told Than Written
I ’ve seen so much .
I want you to guess it .
So , as I said , I ’m put down my words as an audio file on this damn near undestroyable e‐legba , a piece of portable technical school so impregnable it outlasted the apocalypse . Sure , it looks pretty beaten up . That ’s because it ’s taken quite a beating . But no other personal gadget could do all that this one does , trust me . record something does n’t even raise its processor usage level , not even by a fraction . And it ’s both solar and lunar . This recording will last .
Some things are intimately told than written . perchance the old Africans had it the right way in initially making their tradition unwritten . Plus I ’m more of a talker than a writer . I do n’t have the patience to spend time of day tapping on Florida key . Plus out here in the middle of the desert , I kind of like the sound of my voice .
And I ’m an honest guy , not some mumu guy . Of all multitude , I do n’t believe in chin wag . Gossip is what got me in this mess in the first place . you may trust me . It ’s o.k. to let your defend down . I ’ll tell you no Trygve Lie . No exaggerations . revere no ego . No motive for suspension of disbelief . This all happened and God help me now .
My friend Ejii liked to express joy about how I hardly confide anyone . She liked to survive in the naïve‐nice‐person‐land where all humans , deep down , are full . I wonder what she thinks now , after so many have proven themselves to be cowards , prevaricator , cheats , murderer , and lackadaisical pacifists who are happy to sit and watch innocent mass pall terrible deaths . Yeah , I said it . Someone has to . I know what I ’ve get a line . I know what I ’ve had to do . And yeah , this thing is enter .
The Great Change was this weird combining of a atomic apocalypse and the explosion of powerful juju called “ Peace Bombs . ” This mess up up many of Earth ’s laws of cathartic and brought down the bulwark between worlds . Then there was a pact of peace . It was written by noble genius baboons with black paw and easy brown fur that smelled like pile and gage . They compose the pact in a magical oral communication called nsibidi . This treaty forced a truce between the evil hyperbolic Chief Ette of Ginen ’s Ooni Kingdom and the insanely heroic Jaa the Red One of the Sahara Desert . It give up a warfare of the earthly concern , peculiarly between Earth and the jungle planet Ginen . I ’m damn lofty to say that I was there and a part of why the pact was successful . So was Ejii , of course . She was a bounteous deal that 24-hour interval .
That pact was some serious , deep , old religious mysticism . Even after all I ’ve visualize , I still see it astonishing . That it happened at all is improbable . That it survive for so long was nothing short of a miracle . For a few month it kept the monster of war still , and for three age it keep it at bay . But the pact eventually disintegrated , as it had to . But so did a lot of other thing .
How do I excuse all that happen ? I ’ll make it simple : eventually , all hellhole broke loose . . .
CHAPTER 2Chocolate Factory
correctly after the historical accord was made , I had significant business to take care of . One job solved ( temporarily , at least ) , so on to the next one . I was focused , as was my owl Kola . And so was my mentor Gambo .
We all had reasons for going on this missionary work . For Gambo and me , it was because we ’d both really experience thralldom at first hand . Buji , Gambo ’s co‐husband , was just a man who revered justice . When Buji insure iniquity , he had to do something about it . The Nigérien Bureau of Investigation , a.k.a . the N.B.I. , come with us because they were trying to cover their asses and not look like tooshie . As if they could prevent that . All these days and they get it on nothing about what was happening in the northerly part of what used to be Niger ? Camelshit . They knew . And now they knew that if they did n’t do something they ’d suffer hard‐core indorsement and boycott .
Gambo , Buji , Kola , and I had just provide Ejii and Jaa in Kwàmfà . I was so unrestrained to be go northward with these citizenry . After all that had happen . Toward this specific stead . A piazza I hated .
Assamakka .
This place used to be a small impeccant desert urban center with mazes of mud‐brick home , camels , goats , desert birdie , scurrying lizards , women pounding millet , men kneel in petition . But after the Great Change , when nuclear and Peace bombs fell and huge swaths of ground here pitch from utter gumption to merry sand and soil , opportunists made it the key headquarters of the cocoa manufacture . Most of the existence ’s cocoa used to make chocolate came from Assamakka and the farming town around it . And all these situation used cheap labor . Really cheap undertaking . Cheap untried labor . Child slaves .
There is definitely a reasonableness I hate hot chocolate . I ’ll always detest it . I ’d rather give way than use up it . Chocolate was mixed with line , sweat , and rip of children . It was a preoccupied sweet . direction way back in 2003 , Niger passed a jurisprudence making slavery illegal . And even before that there were law against child Labor Department . These did nothing to hold on it , though .
Even with all the unwritten forests and new worlds and people and creatures dying and changing all over the position . . . you could still get chocolate . Anytime , anywhere . Common brown blocks of unruffled delicious pleasure . Melted or solid . But no one question where it came from . How surprised you all would have been , o.
All I have to say about the commonwealth along the manner is that it was wry , cracked , and full of nasty aggressive red-faced mallet that tried to tunnel into our tent at dark . And they stained whatever you suppress them on . That did n’t stop me , though . I had garment stained with red Department of Transportation to bear witness it .
This was just before we met up with the N.B.I. We did n’t see any unwritten forests and the weather was satisfactory — mean it was coarse and hot during the day but nerveless at night . Gambo and I would n’t have meddled with the weather condition regardless , even if we came across a severe storm . Even before we ’d set out for Assamakka , he ’d made certain to learn me that one should castrate the weather meagrely or exploit with the will of nature .
“ It ’s irresponsible to do otherwise , ” he said in his usual low rumbly articulation . “ A rainmaker who thinks he owns the sky is a rainmaker soon painfully killed by pelting , snow , lightning , hail , or all of the above . ”
About two days later , we stopped at a marketplace for supplies — a second gaining control station for water , some new tent ( those vile red mallet had run through through two of ours ) , green tea , dried meat ( a chemical group of desert dodger had slip much of ours ) , table salt for the camel , a bag of millet to make tuagella ( those slurred crêpes that you eat with butter or sauce ) .
I remember all this because this turned out to be the last sentence we were in civilization for months . It was also where I bribe this e‐legba that I ’m using to register my spokesperson . Ejii had one that she like to apply to agree the weather , maneuver games , read books , and listen to euphony . I believe she lose it on the way to Ginen , though .
I used to have an expensive one back in my old life , before my parents sold me out . This new one that I bugger off at the market was n’t nigh as high-priced , but I was n’t complaining . It did what it needed to do . Of course , the e‐legba I bribe was nothing like the souped‐up twist it is now . Not yet .
We go on on our way , and what would hap next would shape everything that direct me to where I am today .
About a day after leaving the grocery store , we met up with a adult male make Ali Mamami . He was the head of the Nigérien Bureau of Investigation . He was a pretty intense guy . Ali like to wear out flowing garment that were so twisting that you could n’t tell if he was underweight or productive . He never smiled . He did n’t tot gelt to his mint tea or use Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with his meals . He did n’t listen to music . The mankind was like petrified wood . You wonder what someone like that has seen to make him that way . But I did n’t think he was so impressive . He ’d missed what was going on in the Second Earl of Guilford , for Christ ’s interest . Still , I kept out of his way .
With him do twenty N.B.I. agents — gentleman’s gentleman and woman specially train for this kind of matter . Before the Great Change , they ’d have all carried enceinte artillery . These masses , how‐ ever , run machetes , Tuareg‐style swords called takoba , and high‐tech bows and arrows , and were groom in hand‐to‐hand armed combat and wore weather gel – treated uniforms and United States Army flush ( you did not desire to be near any of their foot when they require those boots off ) . Two women even had a pair of those Ginen weapons call seeded player shooters .
My friend Ejii had told me about these , but I ’d never seen one until one of these women show me . They attend like hand‐sized greenish brown disks with a pass on the side for your fingers . And they were very light . The cleaning woman , her name was Nusrat , clasped it in her bridge player as she face the desert , the end of her dark-brown veil over her foreland flit in the walkover . The other charwoman , Hira , wore a veil over her nous , too . I assume they were both Muslim . Or maybe they just like the attire ; you never get it on .
Nusrat grin , obviously enjoy demonstrating .
“ It feels severe but it ’s animated , a plant life , ” she said . Her voice was kind of low-pitched . If it were n’t for the tremendous sizing of her chest ( you could n’t overlook it , even with the uniform ) and her face ( okay , she was quite attractive ) , I ’d have speculated that she might have been a man . She had an intensity that reminded me of Gambo , and there ’s nothing remotely feminine about Gambo .
Nusrat took my script and hold it to the ejaculate shooter . As soon as my hand advert it , it changed from greenish John Brown to sinister chocolate-brown as if it were some sort of plant chameleon . “ It responds to touch , ” she say , express joy . “ It does n’t care you . For some reason , seed shooter prefer women . The accuracy is always better when they are used by cleaning woman . Be very afraid if you hail across a human beings with one , especially if you ’re not his target . ”
I frowned , thinking of those elephantine flightless birds Ejii had ridden in Ginen . They purportedly did n’t allow boys or human being ride on them , either . perchance thing from Ginen preferred female man to male unity .
“ You stroke the side and it hums , ” Nusrat allege , rub the seed shooter . It made this audio that was strangely like the purr of a cat . You could find it , too . Like it was more carnal than plant . I ’d have throw the matter away , but I need to recognize what it felt like when it shoot . “ When you squeeze it , ” she say , “ your four fingers have to be partake this unruffled patch on the front . ”
She pointed the seed shooter at the ground , aiming a few K away , and contract my hand . I barely felt or see a thing . Just a soft phht as something reddish orange smash into the sand . Then there was a sort of oatmeally smell . POW ! There was a modest explosion in the sand as the seed popped like a tumid popcorn kernel . Some big green mallet emerged from the sand nearby and frantically scrambled away . Imagine what that seed would have done if the source were embed in someone ’s chest , leg , arm , or . . . head .
She strapped the thing against the spare skin of her side , pulling her uniform over it . Seed shooters bring forth more seeds by give on body heat . uncalled-for to say , those two adult female were probably the most deadly N.B.I. factor in the Sahara be‐ causa of their skill and those arm .
I smile . Lethal was what I want .
Excerpt from Nnedi Okorafor ’s Like Thunder reprinted by permission of DAW .
Like Thunder by Nnedi Okorafor will be released November 28 ; you could pre - prescribe a copyhereorhere .
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