I am delighted to be sharing my review with you today for David Mogo, Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa. My thanks to Tracy at Compulsive Readers for accepting my request to join the tour and for arranging a copy of this book.

Let’s have a look and see what it about…

Nigerian God-Punk – a powerful and atmospheric urban fantasy set in Lagos.

Since the Orisha War that rained thousands of deities down on the streets of Lagos, David Mogo, demigod, scours Eko’s dank underbelly for a living wage as a freelance Godhunter. Despite pulling his biggest feat yet 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 a legion of Taboos—feral godling-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.

David Mogo is a godhunter. He is quite well placed to do this job and he has an advantage as he is a demigod. Set in Lagos, Nigeria, this story is one of gods, demigods and wizards. The area is embrioled in a battle after the gods fell to earth and try to carve out their own home, pushing people out or taking them over.

David himself is quite a complex character, well you would be if you were a demigod surely! Trying to work out who he is and finding a place to fit in. He would rather be human than part god. In some ways this story is like a two sided one, yes there are the battles, confrontation, and power struggles but there is also David’s story. Finding where he belongs and who he is and it runs alongside the gods taking over story well.

I did find this book challenging at times for a couple of reasons. There is quite a dark and disturbing section set around a character called Fati. The conversational language took me a little getting used to, though it is not used all the time in conversations. But that being said it sort of adds something to the story.

This is a book that is quite fast-paced and has a reasonable sized cast. I have to admit Papa Udi was by far my favourite, even though it was his speech that caused me to scratch my head working out what he was saying!

The setting has not been glamourised at all, the author paints quite a picture of the more destitute people in his story. Now I don’t have much knowledge of Nigeria, or it’s culture, traditions or religion. What I did find with this story was that these things came through very nicely through the story. This led me on an interesting interent search of the various Nigerian dieties mantioned.

This book is one of those that will divide readers, but for me it was a chance to read a book about a different culture to my own. A chance to broaden my reading horizons and dicover a new to me author.

It is a book I would recommend.

Suyi Davies Okungbowa is a Nigerian writer of science fiction, contemporary and dark fantasy, and crime fiction. His work has appeared in Lightspeed, Fireside, Podcastle, The Dark, Mothership Zeta,

Omenana, Ozy, Brick Moon Fiction; amongst other magazines and anthologies. He is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona, and has worked in editorial at Podcastle and Sonora Review. He lives online on Facebook, tweets at @IAmSuyiDavies, and blogs at suyidavies.com. His urban fantasy novel about gods in Lagos is forthcoming in 2019.

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