10 awesome science fiction and fantasy books by Black authors

5. War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi

Stepping away from grown-up novels for a minutes, let’s dig into the YA series War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi. War Girls is a near-future sci-fi story set in Nigeria circa 2172, a time when most of the world is rendered uninhabitable and the privileged few live in space colonies off the surface. Black Panther and Gundam Wing are cited as inspirations for the setting and the enhanced technology, so if those stories were your cup of tea, get ready for another gallon.

War Girls follows the story of Onyii and Ify, sisters who dream of escaping the harsh reality of their world and living in peace on the colonies. But war is an ever-present part of their life, and the only thing that matters is survival. Nuclear war and climate change have ravaged the world, and in Nigeria, a constant civil war is waged by flying mechs and soldiers who have been cybernetically enhanced to withstand the radiation of the polluted environment. Onyii and Ify have an iron determination to fulfill their dream, but have to carve a bloody path to get to it.

Drawing context from the real-life Nigerian-Biafran Civil War, War Girls is the sort of reimagining of an oft-overlooked part of history that can both entertain and educate. Part of the inspiration for the story came from Onyebuchi’s own mother, who was a child displaced by the Nigerian Civil War in the late ’60s. War Girls touches not only on that civil war, but also the idea of child soldiers, which were seen in other conflicts in Africa.

Even better, it’s only the beginning of a series. The second book, Rebel Sisters, is due out this October.