Clap Back - Nalo Hopkinson - ★★

AUTHOR: Nalo Hopkinson

SERIES: Black Stars, #5

GENRE: Science Fiction.

RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: Deserves a couple of claps. That’s it.

Too bored by this story to write sensible sentences. Here’s a shortcut review.

Story Synopsis:

A Black fashion designer uses her biochem background to create specialist African garments, where the wearer absorbs memories through nanobots and narrate stories of Black forgiveness. A Black protestor pans the idea, calling it exploitation.

Who is right? And what do they do next?

Enjoyed:

👍 The imagination, especially the role of nanobots in this story.

👍 The idea of the forgiveness quilt and how manipulative people used it for self-promotion forgetting that it was supposed to be sarcastic.

👍 The news articles used to proceed the story.

Was Bored By:

👎 The disjointed execution – took me a while to understand who’s who and what’s what.

👎 The racial generalisation – so fed up of this trope!

👎 The story structure – haphazard.

👎 The plot gaps – not good to have loopholes in a short story.

👎 The ending – sheesh!

Overall, mostly meh despite the great intent. Might have worked better as a novella, but as a short story, it attempts too much within too few words. The potential simply isn’t realised.

Not a fan.

This standalone work is the fifth story in the “Black Stars” collection, described by Amazon as ‘a multi-dimensional collection of speculative fiction from Black authors. Each story is a world much like our own.’ It is currently available free to Amazon Prime subscribers.