Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans

Bespectacled book-loving 12-year-old Adia is unwelcome in her uncle’s Nigerian household, though her aunt Ife, her mother’s sister, tries her best. A letter informs her that she can have a kitchen job at the Academy of Shamans, but Uncle would rather she helped in the family business, harvesting agria vines, source of the Drops that keep the adult population docile. In the ensuing confrontation, Adia’s anger causes an earthquake, and, accused of being an ogbanje, demon-possessed, she runs away with her savings and her cat, Bubbles, to the Academy, and hopes to find a way to get rid of these strange powers, though her photographic memory is quite useful. Sadly, she finds that the Academy is full of rich, paler-skinned entitled kids who pretend to have powers and back each other up in their claims, and they are very nasty to kitchen maids, so much that one of them gets her expelled. She locates to underused Library, but has to hide, and so as overhears a conversation among the gods about the fact that an evil god has taken over the Emperor of Zaria, and she decides to follow the goddess Ginikanwa, in her quest to find and release him. Adia proves useful, and she and Gini, travelling to the Horrorbeyond, team up with a lost warrior girl, Thyme, but have a complicated relationship with an aspiring soldier-boy, Nami, who is sometimes helpful, but often obstructive. Of course, she learns how to use her powers, and at the end of the story the schooI is set to become a proper centre of learning for prospective Shamans. This is a debut novel, and a fantastic adventure in the original sense of the word, but Isi Hendrix makes it credible, and this was very enjoyable.