The leadup to our main group's final confrontation with Black Hat is making me cry real tears like none of the other stories of plucky children facing mortal danger and evil ever had. Maybe it's partly because I'm a mom now, but I attribute the greater part to Okorafor's skill in building the world and story--the slow-building constant dread of this serial child murderer and the real, sickening horrors he committed, brought close to home by his past association with and murder of Sunny's grandmother and now punctuated by the fates of the other Oha covens sent after him. That the more successful ones had given their lives for the children mutilated by Black Hat to come home neatly flips the script on the distressing disposability of disabled people's lives in fiction--their lives were valuable, valuable enough to die for: the "angels" one of the children said had saved him, then I thought of Miknikstic ascending in the arena and that's when the waterworks got primed. We know this is a world with real consequences, one of death and blood.

And now, against that background, these four kids walking into a child-killer's lair holding their knives and their friendship and I just. I can't.