BOOK REVIEW: Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

Note: this book was read and reviewed by me in January of 2024 on a previous site that no longer exists.

I've always found sci-fi a little intimidating. Still, I’m determined to read outside of my comfort zone, so here I am. 

I chose Lagoon for three reasons.

First, the cover is stunning.

Second, I’m already familiar with Nnedi Okorafor. Well, everybody is familiar with Nnedi Okorafor. She’s a well-known author of African speculative fiction and an all-around fascinating person.

Third, the premise is compelling. An alien invasion set against the backdrop of Lagos. I was intrigued.

Lagoon turned out to be a folklore-infused, fantastical, and Afrofuturistic epic. It's unlike anything I've ever read. It took me a long time to read, and even longer to find the right words to describe it. 

I'm still not sure what to make of it, and unfortunately, it shows in the length of this review.

But if you’ve read the book, you'll understand. It’s exactly the kind of story that needs to be discussed in this many words.

When a massive object crashes into the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous and legendary city, three people wandering along Bar Beach (Adaora, the marine biologist- Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa- Agu, the troubled soldier) find themselves running a race against time to save the country they love and the world itself… from itself.

Told through multiple points of view and crisscrossing narratives, the novel combines everything from superhero comics to Nigerian mythology in a story about a city consuming itself.

A Unique Opening

The story starts with a prologue from the viewpoint of a swordfish. Yes. A swordfish. 

Through her eyes, we see something strange in the water, a blob-like thing that "shifts from blue to green to clear to purple-pink to glowing gold." This glowing thing draws all the sea creatures to it. But the swordfish doesn’t move. Instead, she waits for the blob to come to her. Then, before our eyes, she begins to change. 

“Her swordlike spear is longer and so sharp at the tip that it sings. They made her eyes like the blackest stone, and she can see deep into the ocean and high into the sky. And when she wants to, she can make spikes of cartilage jut out along her spine as if she is some ancestral creature from the deepest ocean caves of old. The last thing she requests is to be three times her size and twice her weight. They make it so. Now she is no longer a great swordfish. She is a monster.”

What an opening. It was like I was sitting in a cinema, watching the story unfold on a massive screen. I was immediately drawn in. 

The A’s Assemble

The first chapter introduces us to our first human characters: Adaora, Agu, and Anthony. The As. If you think that sounds like the name of a superhero team, well, you just wait. 

When we first meet them, they are all heading separately toward the ocean at Bar Beach, each with their own reason for being there.

“Bar beach was where she knew her destiny waited for her.”

For Adaora, a marine biologist, Bar Beach is as close as a friend. It has witnessed every significant event in her life, from receiving her degree in marine biology to her father’s sudden death. So, of course, it also witnesses her swollen cheek after her husband of ten years, Chris, slaps her. 

Agu is in even worse shape, with a bloody nose and a swollen face of his own. He is a soldier who was beaten up by his superiors for daring to stop them from assaulting a young drunk woman.

Meanwhile, the famous Ghanaian rapper Anthony, aka ‘Anthony dey Craze,’ has only just managed to slip away from his post-concert after-party for a quiet stroll. The last thing he wants is to meet other people, especially anyone who might recognize him.

Even when it becomes obvious that their paths will cross, the As keep walking straight ahead.

They barely have time to meet and exchange words, before a loud blast throws them to the ground and a wave drags them toward the ocean. 

Before the water swallows up our three main characters, they — along with two witnesses, a gloomy prostitute and a mute beggar — see a dark-skinned woman emerge from the ocean. 

This is how we are introduced to one of the others aka the aliens, whom Adaora names Ayodele. One more A to add to our ranks.

Somewhere in that sequence, though, Anthony also saves a bat from certain death. I’m not at all sure why this matters, except that the bat gets his own chapter later in the book. Because of course he does.

An Overwhelming Cast of Characters

As you can probably already tell, the story is... unique. Not only do the As have their own chapters, but so do the mute boy and the gloomy prostitute. So do Adaora’s husband, Chris; Adaora’s housekeeper, Philomena; and Philo’s boyfriend, Moziz. So do the random passersby on the road and random occupants in a cybercafe. So do the swordfish, and the bat, and a random spider trying to cross a wide road.

In the afterword, Okorafor states that she was inspired to write this book after seeing District 9. I’ve never seen the movie, but from what I understand, it features some heavily stereotyped Nigerian characters.

In response, Okorafor seems to have set out to depict multiple sides of Lagos. However, having spent a limited time in Nigeria herself, she ends up populating her book with... well, stereotypes. A broad range of stereotypes, yes, but stereotypes, nonetheless.

There is the greedy, woman-hating Christian minister; the superstitious wife-beating religious husband; and the 419 scammers in cybercafes orchestrating love scams against unsuspecting foreign women. These stereotypes are not only overused but they also feed the constant profiling of Nigerians as bad people.

PSA to foreigners: please know that not all of us are bigots, religious extremists, wife-beaters, or scammers. Most of us are just normal.

Characters That Lack Depth

Given the overwhelming number of characters, it's no wonder that almost none of them feel fully fleshed out.

Even the main characters feel like little more than devices to advance the plot. They lack depth, personality and personal motivations that tie them to the story. Worse, they don’t even react believably to the plot events.

For example, when they meet the alien ambassador, they are strangely calm. When the alien says she can shapeshift and then casually demonstrates it, there is no surprise. No fear. Just acceptance. In a country where superstition thrives even alongside the best education, it just doesn't feel realistic.

Because we know nothing about them beyond their names (which all conveniently start with the letter A) and their assigned roles, they could essentially be swapped out for anyone else without changing the plot. In some ways, this makes them feel like a stereotypical superhero ensemble.

As much as I love Marvel's Avengers movies, I can admit that they are not exactly the best character studies. At least, not the main movies. There's only so much time to delve into each character's motivation when the stakes are literally world-ending. But at least when I turn to those movies, I can expect to find comedy, chemistry and meme-worthy one-liners.

In contrast, Okorafor's ragtag team of unlikely heroes has an almost comical lack of chemistry. They barely spend any time together before somehow deciding they are the chosen ones, bound by destiny to save the world. Based on absolutely nothing, they’re soon risking their lives for each other. 

On page 117, Adaora and Agu even share a kiss after less than a day of acquaintance and, from what I could tell, less than thirty minutes of actual conversation. 

I call it comical because, for my own sanity, I have to believe Okorafor isn't genuinely trying to pass off this as realistic relationship-building. Because that would be ridiculous. Or maybe we’re supposed to accept it because everything else is already so absurd.

To no one's surprise, my favorite characters were the non-human ones, because I took them for what they were, a spectacle. I even have a soft spot for a certain short-lived tarantula.

There is however, one non-human group that receives even less development than the humans: the aliens.

For a story set into motion by their arrival, they receive shockingly little attention. Beyond being catalysts for the story, who are they? Where are they from? Why do they come to Earth? Why Lagos, of all places? Why the ocean? Who the heck even knows? Obviously not me, despite reading all 300-plus pages.

A Simple Plot Caught in a Tangled Web of Side Stories

"There were aliens in the ocean, and they were going to come out soon."

Okorafor divides her Lagos-centered first-contact alien invasion story into three acts.

Despite the fascinating swordfish introduction, Act 1 quickly becomes a chore. 

The main plot is pretty simple. After meeting the alien ambassador, quickly dubbed Ayodele after Adaora’s late childhood friend—another yet unexplained detail—the As get pulled into a mission to bring Ayodele in contact with the President of Nigeria. 

But in the middle of this, there are a million side stories. An LGBTQ group sees the alien invasion as a chance for liberation. A Christian minister attempts to convert the aliens for publicity and profit. Adaora’s housekeeper, Philomena, and her boyfriend, Moziz, try to kidnap Ayodele at gunpoint and hold her for ransom. 

At this point, the temptation to DNF was strong, but I told myself, “Maybe this is just how sci-fi works,” and kept trudging through. 

Act 2 begins from the perspective of a tarantula crossing the wide road of the Lagos-Benin Expressway, just before he meets his end beneath a car's wheel.

“The tarantula scrambles faster, certain that he will make it across. Certain of his extraordinary speed. Crunch.”

We soon learn that the spider-murdering car belongs to Adaora, who is returning home after their initial attempt to meet the president fails.

As Lagos descends into chaos, the viewpoint switches to the mute boy, then to the prostitute—whose name, we now know, is Fisayo—and then to a slew of other equally irrelevant people.

People get turned into plantain trees, dissolve into mist, or simply disappear. A masquerade invades a local cybercafe before disappearing into a computer screen. At some point, Adaora’s husband encounters a road monster while trying to take their children away from harm's way. 

There are chapters from the viewpoints of bats and spiders and in the voice of Udide, the story-weaver who has apparently been narrating the story the entire time.

“I am the spider. I see sound. I feel taste. I hear touch. I spin the story. This is the story I’ve spun. I am Udide Okwanka.”

And all the while, the actual plot barely moves. The As are still trying to meet the president, this time at the airport when he arrives from Saudi Arabia.

Even as all these non-essential characters are taking up space, I kept going, partly because I had already invested too much time, but also because I was sure that all the threads would eventually come together. 

Spoiler: they didn’t. They did not come together at all.

Act 3 begins with a prologue from the perspective of a bat. The bat. The one that Anthony saves in the first chapter.

It's a fun callback. It’s also completely irrelevant, like 80% of the story. Until the end, the story remains a jumbled mess of ideas, some leading into one another, others leading absolutely nowhere. 

Some storylines—such as those involving the LGBTQ group, Philomena and Moziz, and James the crossdresser—are entirely forgotten. These threads fizzle out completely and are never brought up again. So why then does the book devote so much time to them?

And then some plotlines emerge right in the middle of the book. Out of nowhere, the As have superpowers. Yep. It really is some superhero-type shit.

Other than for the sake of a twist, why do the As even need superpowers? How do they get the superpowers? Are they related to the aliens? Do others have superpowers as well? 

Naturally, these questions are never answered. And since this is a standalone book, they probably never will be.

In the words of Udide, the storyweaver, 

“I know their stories as I know all stories. Do you want to know how their stories end? Do you want to know what happens to Chris? Does he get back together with his wife? Or will Adaora stay with Agu? What of Kola and Fred? What is Anthony’s place in the new world? Yes, you want to know. We all want to know things. But I feel the press of other stories.”

To be honest, by that point, I didn't even want the answers. I couldn’t relate to any of the characters, so I didn’t care what happened to them.

Okorafor clearly had fun writing this book. She crafted a story with a cinematic feel, cutting swiftly between locations and people. As a result, the book reads like one of those big-budget action movies. Big booms. Monsters. Many—maybe too many—characters. Wacky plotlines. There’s even a post-credit scene.

But, like a movie, it keeps the audience on the outside, watching but never fully immersed.

The Pacing Was Off

“He’d learned the hard way that he could never trust people during such times. Anyone could get swept in to the mob’s violent mentality at any moment.”

Even though a lot — a lot — was happening, the story crawled. It moved so slowly that I struggled not to DNF it at 30%, then again at 50%, and once more at 90%. Honestly, if not for this review, I might never have finished it.

I think the problem is that while many of the chapters give us a broader view of the situation, very few push the actual plot forward. A movie camera can pan across multiple perspectives because the image is visually stimulating and lasts only a few seconds. But what might last a few seconds in a movie can read like several long minutes in a book. 

It feels like the reader is suspended in place for long stretches, barely crawling forward. It made for a very hard book to finish. 

The Writing

A few months ago, I tried reading Okorafor’s Who Fears Death but eventually gave up at 40%. Now, here's another Okorafor novel I struggled to finish. 

While I’m in awe of her, an obviously talented, infinitely imaginative writer, I think that she’s just not the writer for me.

Don’t get me wrong. There were moments of brilliance.

"The creature was every color of the rainbow, glowing deep and powerful in the night. And it made music. The creature's cloth quivered with the beat it sent into the ground. The sound was impossible, I swear. The sound of life, the beginning.”

Then there were the less-than-brilliant moments. She uses terms like “high-definition wide-screen television” instead of just television, and “portable chargeable glowing vibrating chirping tweeting communicating connected devices” instead of just phones.

“Because so many people in Lagos had portable chargeable glowing vibrating chirping tweeting communicating connected devices, practically everything was recorded and posted online in some way, somehow. Quickly. The modern human world is connected like a spider’s web.”

I understand that this is a stylistic choice, but I still found it awkward and clunky. The writing just didn’t flow for me.

A large part of the problem for me was the dialogue. This book has some of the most painful dialogue I've experienced, and I shudder at the thought of foreigners thinking that this is how Nigerians speak. 

In an attempt to capture the essence of Lagos, Okorafor has her characters use slang and Nigerian Pidgin, but the slang is overdone and not used properly. 

“Okay, o, ” Moziz said. “Well, if dem get flying ship, wetin again dem get wey we no sabi?” He narrowed his eyes. “Maybe we fit tell am to print original naira notes for us, o. Yes na, if she fit change herself, na him be say she fit do other things, too! Miracle! Heiyaaa! Na so na! Na so universe law be, o, no be mek de law.”

“You know the mythology behind this place, sha?” 

Putting ‘o’ at the end of a phrase and ‘sha’ at the end of a sentence does not automatically make characters sound Nigerian. Instead, it was just weird. And gave me a headache.

It might have worked better if the characters simply spoke in standard English rather than this strange approximation of Nigerian speech.

Food for Thought

This book left me with many things to think about.

“Human beings have a hard time relating to that which does not resemble them. It’s your greatest flaw.”

First, it’s worth noting that while the aliens come peacefully, the chaos is caused mainly by people—those who easily turn against one another when faced with a threat and others who don't hesitate to exploit the resulting confusion. It highlights humanity's sometimes stark brutality.

There is also a clear critique of man-made pollution. After arriving in the ocean, the aliens make it clean— apparently so clean that it becomes toxic to humans. I suppose this is a metaphor for how humans have become so accustomed to pollution that we start to find the clean poisonous.

On the other hand, the aliens also transform sea creatures into monsters, and I’m not sure how that plays into the theme. Then there’s the question of why the aliens care so much about sea life at all. 

There are also strong anti-Christian vibes, considering the Christians are largely portrayed as superstitious, sexist, brainless bigots. Classy.

There are other vague messages around social media, sexism, racism, prostitution, homophobia, disability, corruption, and much more, but they are touched on so shallowly that I couldn’t fully grasp them.

Overall, what came through most clearly was a strong affection for Lagos. Even though I don't think Okorafor accurately represents Lagos, her love for the city shines across the pages.

"Lagos has fed me. Fast life, fast death. High life, low life. Skyscrapers, shanty towns. Flies, mosquitoes. The roads rumble as paths to the future, always hungry for blood"

Final Thoughts

There are many things I liked about this story.

It was such a treat to read about Lagos — my Lagos — at the center of an alien invasion. And how clever is it to integrate local lore like Mami Wata, Ijele, and Anansi into what would have been a straightforward first-contact story? 

As a movie, I think this story would be incredible almost exactly as it is, and I genuinely hope something similar gets produced for the big screen someday. 

But as a group of African American college students watching footage from Lagos joke in the post-credit scene, the chances of that happening are slimmer than the chances of an actual alien invasion.

"You think they gon' spend they money to put somethin' together that looks this real and actually allow black folks to star in it? Real Africans? And then set it in Africa?" He guffawed with glee and shook his head. "Naw, man, not gonna happen. This shit real. That's the more likely scenario."

So, we’ll have to make do with the book.

But, as a book, or at least this book, the story just doesn’t work for me.

The problem is not that Lagoon lacks ambition. The problem is that it has too much of it. It tries to be too many things at once and in the end, becomes almost nothing at all. There are too many story threads that seem to lead somewhere but eventually fall apart completely.

If the story were a little simpler— if it kept a narrower focus on the three main characters, developed their storylines, gave more depth to their personalities— this could have been gold.

Instead, it grows beyond them into a monstrosity that transcends cohesion.

So, as much as it saddens me, I'm giving this 2 out of 5 stars.

Who Is It For?

I don't know a single person I could recommend this book to. Which means I should probably expand my friend group.

To be more serious, if you're looking for a mythic, chaotic, cinematic spectacle with engaging prose and a colorful portrayal of Lagos, this book might just be perfect for you. Just don't expect tightly plotted conventional science fiction.