Simply brilliant. Nnedi has a way of making you comfortable and gradually bringing you into the worlds and characters she writes about. Her stories are at once strange, yet familiar, and always beautiful even when breaking your heart. This story is no exception. It's full of life and you feel the passion that the characters have for it even in the presence of death. I think this is one of my favorite short stories I've read in a long while. It's about impermanence, death, change, and that which hangs on regardless of all that. ( )

Welp, I’m not sure what I just read. It felt like it was going somewhere (and it went somewhere but I’m not sure where), and it felt like it was going to deliver an excellent message (and it did but I’m not sure what it was). I’m not fond of stories I find so confusing and that leave me befuddled. So, sadly, not an author for me. ( )

One of those stories where you're always at least one step behind the action in the plot. I'm still not 100% sure about what actually happened, but it was surely well-written. Kinda feel like this was gory just for the sake of being shocking.

Honestly this is closer to 3,5 than 4 for me, but alas, GR still hasn't gotten with the program and made half stars an option. ( )

A dip into a world I would certainly like to see more of, but a very worthy shorter story to read in its own right. ( )

Genie in a Book
Review of the Amazon Original Kindle eBook (August 2021)

Issaka returns home to Timbuktu, Mali after many years of study and work in the United States. His home town is being devastated by Al-Queda fundamentalist forces in retreat. While burning the books in the town library they release a blue-beaded genie named Faro, who has been trapped inside a book for 2,000 years. Faro inhabits and powers Issaka's iPad as the terrorist forces descend on the family home.

The Black Pages was an entertaining and suspenseful story that combined old world mysticism with new world technology.

The Black Pages is the 2nd of the 6 short stories making up the speculative / fantasy / science fiction series Black Stars, released simultaneously on August 31, 2021 as an eBook by Amazon Originals and as an audiobook by Audible Originals. ( )