Akata Warrior

The second installment in Nnedi Okorafor's Akata series, Akata Warrior continues the story of Sunny Nwazue, a thirteen-and-a-half-year-old Nigerian American girl with albinism living in southeastern Nigeria. In the previous book, Akata Witch, Sunny discovered she is a "free agent" in the Leopard society, a secret global community of people with mystical abilities. Free agents are Leopard People whose powers skipped a generation; Sunny's grandmother Ozoemena, a member of the Nimm Warrior Clan, was murdered before she could pass on her knowledge. Sunny's spirit face, the ancient entity Anyanwu, is the deepest expression of her identity. Together with her three closest friends, Sunny forms an Oha coven, a magically bound group of four: Chichi, a sharp-witted girl of royal Efik and Nimm lineage; Orlu, a calm boy who can instinctively undo juju (magic); and Sasha, a rebellious African American teen from Chicago. Previously, the four defeated a ritual killer and banished Ekwensu, the most powerful and evil masquerade (a dangerous spirit entity), from the mundane world. Sunny is now mentored by Sugar Cream, the Head Librarian at the Obi Library in Leopard Knocks, the local Leopard society haven.

The novel opens with Sugar Cream challenging Sunny to make tainted pepper soup. Venturing out after midnight to pick wild peppers, Sunny encounters a mysterious lake where the pepper field had been. A giant octopus creature, the lake beast, seizes her and drags her toward the water. The water deity Ogbuide, commonly known as Mami Wata, surfaces and drives the creature away, leaving an iridescent comb in Sunny's hair as a gift.

Sunny struggles to balance her ordinary school life with her deepening Leopard education. Her body has been quietly changing, growing taller and stronger, though she tells no one. At home, she works to read a sheet of Nsibidi, a magical writing script, left by her grandmother. She also reads Sugar Cream's Nsibidi book, which pulls her into immersive visions of her mentor's childhood among the Idiok, a clan of Leopard baboons living in a forbidden forest where the physical world and the spirit world overlap. Sugar Cream warns that reading Nsibidi too deeply can kill. Meanwhile, Sunny has recurring dreams of a burning city of smoke that she interprets as visions of the apocalypse, though she confides in no one.

When Sunny accompanies Orlu to visit his Auntie Uju, the older woman erupts with accusations of witchcraft upon seeing Sunny's pale skin. The incident underscores Sunny's position between worlds: She is a practitioner in the Leopard sense, but the hatred directed at her stems from prejudice against her albinism, not from any awareness of her actual abilities.

One night, Sunny's oldest brother Chukwu returns home badly beaten. He reveals that his best friend Adebayo recruited him into the Red Sharks, a violent university confraternity (a Nigerian campus secret society). Chukwu fled the initiation before being forced to harm someone. Sunny enlists Chichi to retaliate: They summon Murks, tiny batlike spirits, to terrorize the members with darkness and nightmares. Sunny then steps outside the flow of time, a natural ability Sugar Cream has been training her in, to confront the group's leader directly. A council car intercepts her afterward; she is arrested for pulling a Lamb (non-magical person) outside of time, a severe violation of Leopard law.

Sugar Cream sentences Sunny to three days in the Obi Library basement, where a resident djinn terrorizes her and attempts to consume her soul. Sunny persuades the giant red spider Ogwu, a descendant of Udide the Great Spider cursed to live in the basement since failing to prevent the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, that helping Sunny will serve as redemption. Ogwu's spiders devour the djinn, and Ogwu leads her children to freedom. Sunny emerges as something of a hero among library students. Chichi reports that the Red Sharks have disbanded and Chukwu has safely returned to university.

Over the following months, Sunny deepens her training under both her coven teacher Anatov, who instructs the group in masking jujus for performing magic undetected around Lambs, and Sugar Cream, who pushes her through advanced gliding exercises. Then, while crossing the Leopard Knocks bridge, Ekwensu hurls a red bead, a piece of the masquerade's own power, that strikes Sunny between the eyes. The impact severs the bond between Sunny and Anyanwu, a condition called "doubling." Sunny cannot call her spirit face, cannot enter Leopard Knocks, and cannot work even basic juju. She connects Ekwensu's return to the physical world to a major oil spill in the Niger Delta.

Desperate, Sunny and Orlu visit Bola Yusuf, a Mami Wata priestess and oracle. A wilderness spirit possesses Bola and reinterprets Sunny's dreams: The burning city is not the apocalypse but Osisi, a "full place" where the physical and spirit worlds overlap. The spirit instructs them to find Udide the Great Spider beneath Lagos and have her weave a flying grasscutter, a beast capable of carrying them to Osisi. Sugar Cream's Nsibidi book confirms this trajectory, revealing it was written to prepare whoever dreamed of Osisi for the journey there. After days of despair, Anyanwu returns during a solitary soccer session. They argue and reconcile; Anyanwu explains that the doubling broke their bond but did not diminish Sunny's Leopard nature. Sunny can work juju again, though with more effort, and Anyanwu now comes and goes freely.

The group drives to Lagos during Christmas break, with Chukwu as their driver. The journey is chaotic: cratered roads, police checkpoints, a bat sent by Ekwensu to steal their supplies, and romantic tensions between Sasha, Chichi, and Chukwu. In Lagos, on New Year's morning, the four friends navigate through the Ajegunle Market and descend into Udide's cave. The Great Spider is house-sized, black, and terrifying. As payment for weaving the grasscutter, Udide demands a story she has not heard. Sunny tells the deeply personal story of being beaten and hung on a coat hook by older girls at her New York school when she was eight, an account of racial cruelty and shame. Udide is satisfied and weaves the flying grasscutter from webbing. Orlu names the creature Grashcoatah; it is van-sized, brown-furred, and intelligent, bonding with Sasha over hip-hop music.

En route to Osisi, the lake beast attacks again, pulling Sunny fully into the wilderness, where Ekwensu introduces her to Death itself. Sunny refuses to face Death and kicks herself back to the physical world. After hours of flight over fantastical jungle, they reach Osisi, which from afar appears as a burning city exactly matching Sunny's dreams. They fly through a wall of harmless flames to reveal a megacity of skyscrapers, stone buildings, and ancient trees populated by humans and spirits. Sunny recognizes the sunflower-yellow stone house from her grandmother's Nsibidi note and realizes it sits on Ekwensu's ancestral land. Inside, the dead palm tree at the house's center splits apart, revealing Ekwensu: a massive mound of dried palm fronds topped with a four-sided wooden mask. Chichi is attacked by the Aku masquerade, a swarm of stinging insects; Sasha dives in to rescue her. Orlu and Grashcoatah fight Ekwensu's spirit minions outside.

Sunny, acting on physical strength rather than juju, climbs Ekwensu's spinning body. Nsibidi symbols from Anyanwu show her a vision of Ekwensu igniting the oil-soaked Niger Delta, confirming the stakes. Remembering the Igbo taboo that unmasking a masquerade is an abomination, Sunny grasps the mask's edge and tears it free. Ekwensu's body crumbles, and the house collapses to dust.

Sunny then finds herself before Chukwu the Supreme Creator, the deity for whom her brother is named, with Anyanwu seated beside the deity. Chukwu initiates the kola nut ritual, takes Sunny's Mami Wata comb, and touches her forehead. She returns to Osisi, where her friends believed her dead. She shares a coconut gifted by a masquerade with Chichi, and its water heals Chichi's deep wound. She keeps the encounter with the Supreme Being to herself.

Time has dilated; only hours have passed in the physical world. The council summons them before dawn. Sunny tells them everything except her meeting with the deity. A council member reveals that her brother chose a trust knot over memory erasure: a binding that lets him remember Leopard secrets but prevents him from speaking of them, so he can protect Sunny. The council releases them all. Later, Udide appears and demands that Sunny and Chichi retrieve something stolen from her by Chichi's Nimm people, setting up a future mission. Weeks later, at the Zuma Rock Festival, Sunny steps onto the soccer field, feels Anyanwu reveling within her, and scores the game's first goal.