Thoughts: Africa Risen Edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Zelda Knight

Source: Netgalley, thank you so much to the publisher!
TL;DR: A super interesting collection, but with a lot of darker stories, especially in the second half.

Thoughts:

It’s extremely hard to review an anthology of this size without just muddling through a bunch of individual reviews. There are, like with any anthology, weaker and stronger stories. The depth and aim of this collection is to highlight and feature stories from African writers using and from African lore/view/history. On that this succeeded fantastically.

The stories and authors were varied in style and type. A lot of these had some very interesting, fun, and not so fun nods to history and I was happy to have caught some of those as I’m working on educating myself more on those things. On the whole I enjoyed this, though the last half felt heavier and darker due to a few triggers that popped up, specifically for me. These are stories I did skim through to the next, so be aware there maybe stories here that you’ll find hard to read or disturbing. My favorite stories all came from the beginning of the collection – in fact my favorite story was the first story, The Blue House. This one was so vivid and grabbed me so intently I was lost in for the duration.

I would recommend this one for anyone who is looking for more stories from the African voice. There were some weaker stories of course, but the whole of it felt strong and rich in tone and voice. Another fantastic collection for those of us who enjoy short stories.