Best Blurred Boundary - David Mogo Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
Publisher – Abaddon Books
Published – Out Now
Price - £8.99 paperback £3.99 Kindle eBook
Since the Orisha War that rained thousands of deities down on the streets of Lagos, David Mogo, demigod, scours Eko’s dark underbelly for a living wage as a freelance Godhunter. Despite pulling his biggest feat by capturing a high god for a renowned Eko wizard, David knows his job’s bad luck. He’s proved right when the wizard conjures up a legion of Taboos – feral godlling-child hybrids – to seize Lagos for himself. To fix his mistake and keep Lagos standing, David teams up with his foster wizard, the high god’s twin sister and a speech impaired Muslim teenage girl to defeat the wizard.
Something I love in fantasy is exploring myths and legends. I love to see the differences and similarities in how we create our gods and monsters. For many reasons we get stuck into Euopean/US pantheons but its always important to actually explore the wider world and gain understanding of it. In David Mogo Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa we are presented with a very intriguing mix of Nigerian urban fantasy and a magical apocalypse tale told in three linked novellas which really does blur the boundaries of fantasy.
In Lagos the Gods arrived and wreaked havoc many years ago. Banished from their heaven they seek to make it on earth but without too much concern for its current occupants. This led to the forming of godhunters people who can remove magical beings from your home. One of which is David Mogo who is currently seeking a job that can help repair the roof. A local wizard called Ajala offers a big score if David can trap two gods. Armed with magical blades, a motorbike, and the helpful fact he is a demigod himself with quick healing he goes into the stranger bits of Lagos to trap a god. But David is about to find a lot more is going on and many forces are conspiring to seize control of Lagos and David will soon be seen as a key player in the conflict to come.
What I really enjoyed about this is across the wider book each novella gives us a very different tale but one that builds on the events of the previous. In the first tale Godhunter we get introduced to this world and its fascinating. Firstly we get a taste of Nigerian life in Lagos and then we see how the impact of the Gods arriving has made. It’s a world where the state has moved out of some areas to allow chaos to reign and Okungbowa makes these forces seem strange, lurking in the shadows unseen and quite powerful. David in many ways appears at first the standard urban fantasy hero – looking for some funds and a quite pragmatic morality yet underneath a desire to do what is right. There are however mysteries to him – why is he a demi-god and why did he get abandoned on Earth.
I’ll be careful here as one of the joys here is unwrapping these mysteries. The first tale is very much a standard urban fantasy tale but then Okungbowa has the courage to destroy that world in the second tale Firebringer. David loses his confidence and his allies very swiftly and this moves us much more into a post-apocalyptic setting where David meets an enemy far more powerful than him and he ends up having to regroup in desperate times. Part quest part race for survival and I liked that David’s feeling of a lack of confidence comes through the story. Then in the final tale WarMonger we go full scale battle of the Gods with teams on both sides working out a final route to victory filled with action and magical battles. The pay-off of key characters here really comes across as we find out more about them in particular I liked the strange relationship David has with a ancient sulky wizard known as Papa Udi who provides David with weapons but holds his own secrets and two twin gods who both taunt and aide David give the tale a more supernatural dimension. The one thing I would liked more is a bit more exploration of this world but the novella format focuses on exploring David’s story rather than anyone else’s and it makes each a punchier read focused on the story and action.
Without giving much way I was very satisfied with how this tale is told three modern myths giving us some insights into pantheons I as a western reviewer am not familiar with but always fascinated to see how thunder gods and tricksters pop up everywhere. Okungbowa has a great ability to plot and create settings to plunge his characters in and change the world each time rather than return to the default. By the end we are in a very different place to where the story started. I would recommend for fans of Dresden Files, Alliette de Bodard’s Dominion of the fallen and Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning – the boundaries are crossed skilfully and a author I will be looking out for again.
