Lata's Reviews > The Book of Phoenix

3.5-4 stars. The story opens with a old couple in a desert at some unspecified future. When the old man stumbles upon an old, abandoned cache of computers, he ends up accidentally triggering a recording which relates events from the past, which is still many years in our future. Nnedi Okorafor describes a frightening time in this past, where a large biotech firm LifeGen, though referred to throughout the story as Big Eyes, masquerades as a benign drug and cosmetic company, all the while actually conducting a variety of sickening and terrible human experiments. These experiments yield benefits such as advances in organ transplants but more importantly, in biological weapons in the form of humans, known as speciMen. The author also describes a world where climate change has had devastating effects, where worldwide temperatures are much higher, and oceans have flooded many cities.
The author follows a speciMen called Phoenix, a three year old with the body of a 40-year old woman. Phoenix and her follow speciMen at the New Yor City facility are constantly monitored and tested. Until the death of a friend and fellow speciMen, Saeed, Phoenix does not question her bizarre life at the facility. When her body begins vastly overheating because of her grief, Phoenix manages to destroy the facility and escape. Phoenix learns much more about LifeGen over the course of this story, and begins fighting back against her controllers.
Nnedi Okorafor has woven in many elements to this story; misogyny is present, unsurprisingly, and there is clear and vicious racism at work throughout this story:
-LifeGen's human subjects are primarily Africans or those of African descent, and range in age from children to adults; clearly brown lives are still seen as much less valuable than others.
-Okorafor also weaves the HeLa cells, with all their fraught history, into this narrative.
-Depressingly, law enforcement still believes that black and arab individuals are probably criminals and terrorists.
-Prisons are still overflowing with brown bodies.
This tale is dark, and disturbing. The speciMen's alterations are weird are fantastical and nauseating. Despite this, I wanted to know where were Phoenix's rage and pain going to take her, and how her actions would somehow connect with the present time of the old couple.