Nnedi Okorafor's "Who Fears Death" is like getting kicked in the stomach by something powerful and beautiful and unsettling in equal measure. I've read some of Okorafor's YA novels and I've read her horror novel "Lagoon" and I was in no way prepared for "Who Fears Death", a post-apocalyptic science fantasy that, despite how it starts, is not the coming of age story of outcast Onyesonwu. It's a fulfillment of purpose story seeing Onyesonwu endure and survive and overcome trauma after trauma until finally reaching a conclusion that you were told was coming but when you reach it, you were lulled into forgetting it was happening by everything else.
(Cut for length but also because you can't not talk about rape with respect to "Who Fears Death".)