We Won’t Fade Into Darkness is collection of speculative short stories, mostly on a poisonous gas, Nigerium (a name I particularly love), and the struggles to survive in a world without balance. Nigerium may stand as our choices, as our political leaders, as anything that makes us barely alive, that makes us strive too hard to survive.
As I read the first story, Pretty Bird, what I thought was ‘Tj, I adore your imagination’
I loved The Killing Mountain. I don’t know how TJ imagined all of that, but it was emotional. Brilliant. Fierce.
I found Jidenna theatrically boring.
I thought that Room 101 was going to take me on a fantastic ride, but after the beginning part, it shocked me with a certain kind of traditional dullness that comes with some speculative fiction.
I liked Life In Earth for its flow and questions and how it ended, but I didn’t like it for only showing us beautiful things without actually saying anything.
Passion Fruit was completely beautiful. Like I said before, I love your imagination. The imagery was absolutely stunning. It could be developed into a novel.
In Alarinka, I wanted more. I wanted the plants to be able to talk, to be able to express themselves. I wanted them to tell how they’ve saved the humans and absorbed most of the poison, and how the poison feels like manure and rain and sunlight.
I loved I Can’t Breathe for its tenacity. And the way it ended just makes me want to slap TJ, but that also, I think, is just right on the spot.
An Abundance of Yellow Paper is a combination of the past and the future. Within the few minutes you’ll read the story, you’d find yourself asking questions, picturing things from the past, thinking of the future, hoping that things won’t go bad, that like the poet wrote on one of the papers the little boy picked, we won’t fade into darkness.
(A review by izuudokwu.wordpress.com and republished on blackboyreview.com with permission.
