War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi
(War Girls, Book 1)
Released: October 15, 2019 | Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction
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The year is 2172. Climate change and nuclear disasters have rendered much of earth unlivable. Only the lucky ones have escaped to space colonies in the sky.
In a war-torn Nigeria, battles are fought using flying, deadly mechs and soldiers are outfitted with bionic limbs and artificial organs meant to protect them from the harsh, radiation-heavy climate. Across the nation, as the years-long civil war wages on, survival becomes the only way of life.
Two sisters, Onyii and Ify, dream of more. Their lives have been marked by violence and political unrest. Still, they dream of peace, of hope, of a future together.
And they’re willing to fight an entire war to get there.
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War Girls began when Tochi Onyebuchi’s mother casually mentioned that she had lived in the forest with her family during the Nigerian Civil War. She had been a young child when the Biafran War began, and those memories became the foundation for the story.
REVIEW
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ☆
Reading it backwards made it better. ⏪
If you just want the review, scroll down. But first, a quick tangent:
Yes, I literally read this book backwards, chapter by chapter, starting at the end. (Don’t judge, I had my reasons.) Partly it was an experiment, partly because I tend to reread passages anyway to make sense of them, but mostly because I enjoy books more when I know they’re actually going somewhere. Not necessarily the ending, but the reassurance that the story is building toward something and isn’t just aimless filler (cough ACOTAR cough).
And honestly, I think it worked. If I had read it the “normal” way, I probably would’ve dismissed it as another unoriginal YA novel trying too hard. In my experience, YA stories often start painfully slow, and War Girls is no exception. But by reading it backwards, I got all the good parts up front, which made the “later” chapters (aka the beginning) much easier to push through. It was also surprisingly fun to watch the action unravel in reverse, kind of like my own DIY version of Momento.
Review
Yes, this is very much a YA novel riding the Black Panther wave. But what I appreciate is that War Girls doesn’t try to hide it. The influence is intentional, from the futuristic African setting, to the advanced technology, to the character dynamics. Instead of feeling like a rip-off, it leans into homage.
Here’s a sample moment that perfectly illustrates the stakes:
“She can’t waver now. Not when everything that has happened has finally caught up to her. The murder of her family, her life with the Biafran War Girls, her kidnapping, her time with the Nigerians overseeing the separation of families and the detention of children dubbed “enemy combatants,” her time in prison when she had lived as an accused traitor, her attempted assassination of the person who slaughtered her family. All of it has been leading to this moment.”
Reading this backwards gave me something to look forward to, which definitely helped my engagement.
That said, this is still YA through and through: slow in the beginning, predictable in the end, and pretty mediocre overall. There’s no big “wow” factor or fresh twist to separate it from the countless other YA fantasies already out there.
Where War Girls does stand out, though, is its pacing. Once it gets going, it barely stops. The story moves from one major event to the next with little downtime: alliances formed and broken, scenes of mass destruction, cybernetic body modifications, hover-bike chases, even a unique take on futuristic terrorism. By the halfway mark, it really does become hard to put down.
So no, I don’t usually recommend reading a book backwards. But in this case, I knew what kind of story it was going to be, and I wanted to shake things up. And honestly? It made the experience better. Will I do it again? Probably not. (Well… maybe for the sequel. Just because.)
