A review by lktx
Warrior of the Wind by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

adventurous tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Warrior of the Wind by Suyi Davies Okungbowa is a multi-POV fantasy novel billed as being mainly about Lilong and Danso, two people on the run. Lilong is from the Forgotten Islands and Danso is a jali, but I didn’t get much more than that when it opened. I didn’t realize it was the second in a trilogy and I was lost at the start. There are a lot of names of people and places that the author throws at the reader that I didn’t understand (ibor, Diwi, jali, etc), but I did appreciate that she started me in Lilong’s POV and kept me there for several chapters so I could have a small tether. It was hard for me to get into and took me quite a while to read. 

Lilong and Danso didn’t always feel like the main characters a lot of the time. We get in the heads of many characters to see what’s happening around the world. It leads to a decent amount of mystery about what is happening in various places and the author connected them pretty well. I also found that I didn’t particularly like any of the characters except for Nem, until the very end, when Lilong’s (and Danso’s) motives became clearer. Maybe they would have if I’d read the first book, but I would have liked it to be clearer so I knew why I cared what happened to them.  

The world was fascinating. I loved that it was inspired by West Africa. However, my biggest issue with this is that not a whole lot happened in the story. There’s a heist, but it mostly felt like a lot of moving pieces around the playing board and even the end, which should have been a big moment, felt a little anticlimactic. There’s a big cliffhanger and there’s a third book coming, but I can’t find it in myself to want to know how it ends.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for allowing me to read this book as an ARC so I could share my honest review.