Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

 It's tricky writing a review for something like this because it is most definitely a work with an agenda. Because it's an agenda that is rooted in the deep-seated racial wound that has been allowed to fester in this country, it's designed to make many of its potential readers uncomfortable, and that's fine. It made me uncomfortable and I'm not afraid to admit that. Discomfort tells us that we need to look at and address things. So on that level, this is an excellent book. It gave me a lot to think about.

However, in terms of how it functions as a work of fantasy or science fiction, this book is deeply flawed. My edition came in at about 170 pages and it really needed to be almost twice that length to really carry the narrative. Kev and Ella are siblings born with incredible powers. They are born and are raised in violent and impoverished areas of LA and New York. The dystopian near future features a clearly racist and technologically enhanced police force guided by predictive algorithms. I'd go into more detail but it's left quite vague, which is the problem.

The narrative is disjointed and skips through key events so fast that the reader is left scrambling for context. For both Kev and Ella, it's like Onyebuchi gives us these brief flashes of insight that resemble flicking though someone's camera roll. What emerges is a sparse narrative about these two siblings who maintain a close connection through mysterious powers that seem to span everything from telekinesis, to astral projection, through teleportation, and prophecy. These powers are never explained and seem in many ways to be an aside to the story of the relationship between the two that continues develop and strengthen despite Kev's incarceration and Ella's self imposed exile.

What bothers me is the "almosts."  There is almost a really chilling ending. There is almost an excellent statement about the costs of letting the system wear you down. There is almost a beautiful arc for Ella from violent avenger, to villain, to redeemed. There is almost an awe inspiring  arc for Kev as the redeemer. There is almost a story here about the cycle of violence turning into a downward spiral of entropy. Almost, almost, almost, but none of it is quite there. The whole story feels compressed and like there could be so much more there if it weren't confined to 170 pages. (Maybe that's part of the point, but if so, it's another almost.)

There is so much potential here.