This is on a lot of ‘best cyberpunk’ and ‘best sci-fi since 2000’ lists, and it took me a while to track it down. It’s a first-contact trilogy that takes place in Nigeria, where a town is built around a weird alien that opens once a year to heal those around it (and also reanimate the dead). It’s told from the perspective of Kaaro, a kind of psychic security specialist/detective with a criminal history. It’s not what I’d call cyberpunk, but it certainly shares some characteristics with the genre, and will likely appeal to fans of it.

It wasn’t until the last 100 pages that I was sure I had a grasp on what was going on in this book. It has alternating timelines that sometimes are difficult to keep track of, and a wild alternate reality as dazzling as it is compelling. 

It was disorienting to me in the same way some of William Gibson’s books are — for a long time I was worried that I wasn’t keeping up, that I missed a couple of plot points that connected everything and I was hopelessly lost. It doesn’t help that the story drags a bit in the middle section.

But the last quarter of the book redeems it — things come together in a satisfying and intriguing conclusion that sent me looking for the sequel. 

It’s good — it demands all of your attention, but also rewards it.