This book really defies any adjectives I could use to describe it, so I won't even try. Everyone should read this. I think it'll particularly appeal to fans of Carmen Maria Machado because of the way this sort of dystopian dread builds in the background of a family's story.

Ella's little brother Kev is a riot baby, born during the LA riots that happened just after the Rodney King beating. The speculative fiction part of this book is that Ella has a Thing. She can make things happen sometimes, really a sort of telekinetic power. This Thing sets her apart from the world around her.
Most of the book takes place either in Harlem or in the poorer parts of LA. Really, this novella is social commentary on what society makes of young black men and what they make of what little they are given. Reading about how Kev grows up, you can see how he slides into gang culture after being surrounded by it all his life. When he goes to prison, you then see what prison makes of him. There are bits of technology, mostly about the surveillance state, thrown in as well. How do people use technology to oppress each other, to manage each other? Isn't this just an extension of how people have always used tools and laws to oppress and manage each other?

Ella, meanwhile, goes her own way. She begins to teach herself how to use her Thing instead of letting it control her. She learns to travel and she learns how to bring someone with her. At the end of the book, she possesses a combination of extreme power and ultimate detachment that make her extraordinarily dangerous for the status quo. Kev might be the riot baby, but she's seen all of it too. And burning it all down to see what might come after doesn't seem so bad.

How far are we from burning it all down? After reading this, I was spooked and feel like it's closer than most of us would like to think.

Reading a Tochi Onyebuchi work is guaranteed to be intense, unflinching, moving, and memorable. Riot Baby checks all those boxes. It’s Onyebuchi’s first book marketed to general adult audiences rather than the YA fiction market.

Riot Baby gets its name from one of its protagonists, Kev, who was born during the 1992 riots after the trial and acquittal of four police officers for brutality in the arrest of Rodney King. Kev’s older sister, Ella has special gifts and powers. She has foresight and knew her mother would have a baby boy. She can make it warmer or cooler, she can make rats explode, and she can even travel through time and space and reality (seeing others’ thoughts and memories). Her powers are volatile and fueled by anger. And nothing makes her angrier and feel more powerless than realizing that even her gifts are insufficient to protect her brother from racism and oppression.

Author Onyebuchi uses the novella format to great effect, covering a lot of ground and packing a lot of punch into a lean 176 pages that sharply confront the long-standing problem of institutionalized racism. The novella’s four parts take place in four settings following Kev and his family from South Central Los Angeles to Harlem, and subsquently showing Kev imprisoned at Rikers Island, and later released to Watts, a fictionalized near-future version of the LA neighborhood. Onyebuchi has imagined Watts as a controlled parole colony where parolees are still far from being freed men. (As one example of how much Onyebuchi can pour into this work, look up the Watts riots. You’ll see Watts was a very informed choice.)

Onyebuchi’s pen gets creative with form through skilled use of multiple narrative voices and a fluid narrative timeline that stretches from before the Jim Crow era into the imagined future. The use of multiple voices and the fluidity of past, present, and future reminded me of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Indeed, Onyebuchi is quickly establishing himself as being worthy of inclusion into the canon of Black literary greats.

Riot Baby will not leave readers unmoved and unchanged. It is a work that will engender discussion and examination of our society and the structures that keep oppressed people down. It’s informed by anger, yet not devoid of hope. A kind of hope that is more Malcolm X than Martin Luther King, Jr. And that brings me back into Black History. In 1951 Langston Hughes asked, “What happens to a dream deferred?” In 1963 Martin Luther King, Jr. gazed hopefully into the future toward a glorious day of freedom. He was speaking approximately one hundred years after emancipation, and I don’t imagine Dr. King dreamed our society would still have so far to go nearly sixty years later. Onyebuchi gives voice to the anger that has been boiling over in so many disenfranchised. In contrast to Dr. King, Riot Baby envisions Mr. Hughes’ deferred dream exploding, but with a Black phoenix rising from the ashes.

Verdict:
5 of 5 Hearts: A Fiery, Unblinking Look at Racism.

Before I say anything, read this first. This is your homework for this blog post. Miryam clearly and concisely explains the issues with AMERICAN DIRT, and pretty much explains why I’m not going to weigh in beyond saying, “This is A Bad Thing and here are the voices that we should be listening to as to why this is A Bad Thing.”

You might be wondering why I’m bringing this up while reviewing RIOT BABY by Tochi Onyebuchi. The backgrounds are different, the experiences in circles of a Venn Diagram that barely touches. However, I bring it up because of the spot they do touch: the fact that these narratives concern violence against people of color by white people.


RIOT BABY centers around Ella and Kev, two siblings in Compton, and their budding supernatural powers amidst a landscape of racism and police brutality. The narrative spans decades, and despite being a novella at around 170-ish pages, it packs a complete and cohesive punch without feeling rushed or slow. The POVs split from Ella in third person to Kev in first person, the shifts coming naturally and without a sense of confusion that might’ve come from less experienced hands at the wheel.

The prose is magnificent, crafted in a fluid and very present kind of way. You are present on these city streets, watching these cops harass Black kids, you are present with Kev as he sits in his jail cell with a sheet-made noose around his neck, you are present with Ella as she tries to navigate and master her explosive, mind-bending powers.

It paints such a clear picture. It reminds you over and over that the system perpetuates such violence against people of color in America, and as much as you think that you’re not like that, that you’re above it, if you’re a white person you automatically benefit from this system. Lalaa of THIS BLACK GIRL READS has a fantastic review of this aspect that I’m going to point you towards. (Yes, more homework. Welcome to the thunderdome, kids. As your neighborhood white kid, I will review this book and talk about its impact as seen through my gaze, but I also believe that other reviewers will have more insight to this novella.)

One thing I absolutely adore is the prose. Someone might say something about the running sentences, but in my eye it pushes the boundaries of what sentences can contain, and highlight the pointed, shorter sentences. (And on GOD, if someone mentions David Foster Wallace in my presence I will lose my goddamn domestication. INFINITE JEST sucked ass, if you want to talk about longer sentences and what they can do for your prose, read RIOT BABY instead. I don’t make the rules I just enforce them.) The prose is lyrical and enrapturing, flowing in a way that carries you through the story but strong enough to hold you at the important parts and say, “Don’t you dare look away from this.”

Another thing I absolutely adore is the relationship between Ella and Kev. As an older sibling, I understand that desire of wanting to protect your siblings from everything, down to my very bones. And as an older sibling, you are the one that sets the bar, draws the line, and then finds your sibling to tell them that you’ll get them up to that mark. Their relationship is raw, seeing that Kev lowkey resents Ella for the way she left when he was younger, and I get that too – I sat in a similar situation as a kid, and even as time progresses it’s hard to forgive the older siblings that abandoned you. (Bonus points for siblings of brother who went to jail – I want to say this is a more niche group, but hands up and hearts out to that crowd.)

I just . . . love this novella, guys. Love it to bits and pieces, and I’m about to sneak into your houses to put in on your shelves so you can read it too.

Riot Baby was a bit of a challenge for me to read for two reasons. One was that I didn't have all the background knowledge on Black history that was probably necessary to understand the full picture of the book. The other is that it follows a fairly nonlinear structure, slipping between present, past, and possible futures. However, I was still able to enjoy it for what it was, and as I kept reading, it became easier put together the pieces of the story. It's a candid depiction of the violence of antiblackness, past, present, and potentially future. The futuristic, dystopian elements were completely believable, featuring an expanded surveillance state designed to contain and control Black people and render them slaves without physical chains. The magical elements served the story on an emotional and thematic level, evoking the pain and the anger of centuries of injustice and the desire to raze the system to the ground. The bigger story is anchored by and brought into focus through the complex familial relationships between Kev, Ella, and their mother; the memories given and taken and received bind them together with an unparalleled intimacy. Kev is only a year older than me, but his life could not be more different. His narrative served to force me to confront my own privilege while also further entrenching my desire to help end antiblack institutions.

The publisher and Netgalley provided me with an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.

Set in a dystopian America that eerily echoes the challenges and chaos we now face, this book will make you question your perceptions and your reactions. Omyebuchi has an uncanny ability to imbue his stories with a wonder that provokes critical thinking and advocates action. This book is no exception.

Ella is defined by neither time nor dimension because of her extraordinary abilities. She uses her abilities to defy the cycle of racism and poverty that has confined her. Her abilities allow her to encourage and empower her brother Kev, a young black man who has become a victim of the criminal justice system. Kev has been incarcerated for the blackness that abbreviated his choices and his opportunities. It becomes Ella's mission to extract him from his situation - by any means necessary.

This is a haunting, evocative portrait of the black experience in America. Kel's narrative arc is infused with archival memories of the experiences of his ancestors, captured and distilled in the extraordinary abilities of he and his sister. The dystopian setting is a both a warning and a prediction, and challenges the reader to take definitive preventive action.

My reaction on finishing Riot Baby can be summed up with two simple words: Holy shit. This is a novella that I will have to reread at some point. Riot Baby is a humbling, visceral collage of two lives and the system that exists to crush them at every turn. It is a battle cry, a scream, and a sob for the black community. When people talk about #OwnVoices, this is what they mean. 

Everything about this novella clicked for me. It worked, beautifully, painfully. Some novellas try to compress a larger story into something that feels incomplete, leaving the reader dissatisfied and wanting more. Onyebuchi, however, sidesteps that with liberal use of time skips and a vignette format. Each scene is, to some degree, self-contained. To a reader, the end result is that it feels a bit like a living, breathing photo album. It’s a piece of ergodic literature, requiring that the reader actively participate and put together the puzzle pieces, filling in the blanks on their own. The structure is intentional and creative, allowing for a much larger story to be set into a smaller number of pages. 

The prose, too, helped keep things concise and tidy. Each word, each phrase, packed meaning upon meaning into it. The use of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is particularly effective in creating the overall atmosphere and culture depicted. I’m generally very sensitive to vernacular that is shoe-horned in as a cheap way of creating a setting, and that was NOT the case here at all. It felt natural, and slotted in beautifully within the overall writing. The setting informed the way of speaking, rather than the way of speaking being used to create a setting. 

Brooklyn, New York. An underpaid single mother with two kids: Ella, and Kevin. She does everything she can to keep them together, but she only has so much to give - especially when Ella begins to grow into something that neither of them can understand. Ella’s Thing, a magic born of anger and fear, gives her control over the world around her. Her brother, Kevin, is smart, bright, on track to stay in school and have a genuine future… but when Ella can’t control her Thing and must leave the family, this pushes everything off track for Kev. Or, perhaps, everything already was off track - it’s not right that these two kids know that they must hide in the interior closets when cats are gangbangin’ out on their street. It’s not right at these two kids know so many people who have been killed or hurt or assaulted. That, however, is their reality - and their anger at that reality is what Onyebuchi aims to explore in this shattered, fragmented narrative. 

"I want to tell Mama about how things were getting better after Ella’s last attack, how I’ve been studying on the side and maybe getting closer to finding out how Ella could do the things she could do and that I’m gonna keep doing that once I get to college and get my degree. I want to tell Mama that we’re healing, that we’re fixing what we can fix and that nothing’s been broken beyond repair and that the only way we can keep whatever’s eating Ella’s insides from devouring her is to stay together. But more sobs come, and I try to get my brain to move toward a solution, figure out what I can build to get her back, to get at whatever’s hurting her, but I can’t think of nothing."

Kev is the titular Riot Baby, as their mother went into labor during the 1992 riots in LA. When she was rushed to the hospital, it was a complicated birth - just like Ella’s. Onyebuchi takes every scene and explores the social context behind it, creating a much larger narrative than seems possible in such a short novella - in this case, we see the ambivalence of the doctors, the way her pain isn’t taken seriously. It doesn’t matter to them if she lives, dies, or if her child is born healthy. All that matters to them is that she inconvenience them as little as possible, and they fail to even read her chart before walking into her room. That is the treatment that every single scene in this novella gets, and each one is just as much of a gut-punch as the one before it. You are present and there for their pain, and their anger becomes yours as a reader. 

Ella understands all of that. She is growing, constantly, and lives in the minds of those around her. Where Mama was opaque and mysterious to Kev, she’s an open window to Ella. She hates that they’ve moved to Harlem, and to an extent, she hates Mama for having brought them there. She has so, so much anger, and it’s overflowing - she takes it out  on those around her. She’s been hurt, and she doesn’t know how not to cause hurt any more herself. Her Mama tries to reassure her, telling her that God will help her… but Ella can’t have faith in a God who lets her family be shot at every day, who allows school shooting and church shootings and violence at every turn. 

“It’s so bad here,” she whimpers. “Oh, baby.” A look of helplessness flits across Mama’s face. Desperation, then it passes, and Ella already knows it’s because Mama knows she can’t let Ella see her hopeless, and Ella hates that she has to know that. “Baby, that’s just the Devil at work. But you know there’s more out there than just the Devil.” 

“But everything’s the Devil!” 

“The Devil is busy here.” Mama has taken to smoothing out Ella’s outfit, running her hand down her sleeves. “The gangs, the drugs, all the evil that men do to each other here. Sometimes even the police. That’s the Devil. But you just gotta pray, all right, Ella?”

Time skip. Kev is an adult now, hanging out with the cats who are gangbangin’ in Harlem. He’s at the wrong place, the wrong time, and he ends up in Riker’s awaiting trial. He waits for trial, and waits for trial, and his trial is postponed, and the judge needs more time to prepare, and he stays there becoming more and more violent and more and more out of touch with the outside world every year for eight years. Ella visits him, both in person and using her Thing, but that just makes Ella angrier. The dystopian, science fiction elements of the book begin to slowly creepy in, as the reader begins to get an inkling of the way the police state works in this alternate future. 

"This is the other side of what solitary did to him. The agitation, the running straight into painful memories rather than barricading himself against them. Whatever destructive impulses propelled Kev that night of the attempted armed robbery now augmented by what twenty-three hours in a cell alone for six months will do to a man. Kev looks as though he is staring at the sun, intent on blindness. Ella manages to make it onto the Rikers bus heading back into Queens before crying."

Ella begins to view her Thing less as a gift, less as a curse, and more as a responsibility. She will not, cannot, stand by as these injustices continue to take place around her. And as she flits across the world, it occurs to that maybe she’s the one the world has been waiting for. Maybe it’s up to her to fix things. Her Mama is dying, and the world is dying, and everything is wrong - but perhaps she is the one who is right. 

"Six shots into the back of a man fleeing arrest on a child support warrant, or two shots ringing out and cops standing over the prone bleeding body of a young man in the midst of protests commemorating the anniversary of another boy killed by a cop. After each one, Ella had Traveled. Straight to the site of the killing, and she’d touched the ground, breathed in the air, and sucked that history deep into her body. Inhaled the violence of the previous hours. Sometimes it felt pornographic. To go to that cul de sac in McKinley, Texas, where black kids younger than her sat on the ground, handcuffed, while their white neighbors jeered and one cop grabbed a girl in a bathing suit by the arm and hurled her to the ground, then dug his knee into her back while she wailed for her mother. She’d returned from every trip with her head in her hands. What if I’m the answer? she had asked herself. What if I’m the one we’ve been praying for?"

And, maybe, she is.

ARC provided by Tor.com via NetGalley



I really, really liked this novella. The prose was gorgeous, the story was immersive, the imagery was brutal, beautiful and compelling. Considering that only 174 pages are devoted to the complicated themes tangled together in this short gem, it's astounding how much the author has crammed in without it ever feeling muddled or crowded.



The story follows Ella, who, as a little girl, discovers she has paranormal abilities. These take the form of a type of clairvoyance but ripen to terrifying displays of telekinesis, teleportation, pyrokenesis etc during the course of the story. Kev is Ella's little brother, born during the riots in 1992 which followed the acquittal of Rodney King's murderers. The American system - both legal and social - fails both children and their mother (and many many other poc) leading to a tale which twists back on itself, tracking over oppressed past and dystopian future. I don't want to include spoilers but this dual pov, non linear, time skip novella was nevertheless still easy to follow. It felt like being handed pieces of a jigsaw and asked if you dared to put them together. Because this book is about rage born of injustice. It's about racism, both generational and current, and potentially future.



Understandably, it reflects the American experience of black men and women, drawing on American history. (So while certain aspects will no doubt resonate, this is not representative of racism as a whole on a global scale.) It deals also with poverty - again from a uniquely American perspective. I have to admit, as a UK person (and the UK does have issues with poverty and crime, we are far from perfect) the sort of decisions that (for example) lead a stabbed man to walk to hospital instead of calling an ambulance are bewildering. I was horrified by the US healthcare system all over again, and tbh that's an issue I trip over at least once a week. Similarly, US gun laws do not make any kind or sane or logical sense to your cousins across the pond. This is not a case of 'we're better than you' btw - this is a genuine expression of utter bafflement because while we do have some gun crime, it's nothing compared to the US and we have no frame of reference for it.



However, despite lack of experiences that gel in certain areas, it's easy to see how these things pile up and pile up, exacerbating each other and causing the very system that fails the MCs. It's a grim picture and it's a tribute to the skill of the author that he has created a narrative so compelling that you just can't put the book down, even when faced with the scale of the problem. I really enjoyed the sci-fi element; I was rooting for both siblings; and I took a certain amount of enjoyment in the rage as well as finding something transformative and hopeful in it too. I would say the author accomplished what he intended here in terms of making the reader feel.



The last 10% of the novella didn't really work for me. Possibly more space would have helped. It felt to me that having followed a logical narrative arc for both Ella and Kev, that Kev got short changed at the end there. That said, this was a brilliant novella and I highly recommend it.

Riot Baby is powerful, raw, heartbreaking, and an absolute must read. I am going to try to give as little away as possible for two reasons: One, I think you need to read it for yourself; and two, I genuinely don’t think I could do an explanation justice. The story primarily centers around siblings Ella and Kev, and their experiences as young black Americans. At pretty much every turn in their lives, their trajectories become shaped by the brutal and racist treatment of black people, often by police and others in power positions.

You will be filled with rage as you read this book. Not only for our main characters, but because it’s true. While Kev and Ella are fictional, the riots are not. The experiences of young black people in this country are not. The author makes the reader care about not only the main characters, but the manages to elicit strong feelings for even the most minor, even nameless characters. And every single thing about this story made me think about the real human beings subjected to these atrocities (and more) every day.

Bottom Line: In addition to the importance and emotional pull of Riot Baby, it’s also just a damn good story. So do yourself a favor and grab it asap.

We received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley for review purposes. All opinions are our own and do not reflect the thoughts or beliefs of the publisher or author.

Riot Baby is a gut-wrenching sci-fi novella filled to the brim with pain, violence, and hope. It follows two siblings living in a contemporary world painted with a dystopian hue. Both Ella and Kevin have unique gifts but their lives are marked by violence with Kevin’s birth occurring only hours after the police who beat Rodney King to death were acquitted. When Ella glimpses a bleak future for her brother she tries to do some thing about it and forge a life of hope for them both in a world in chaos.

Riot Baby is definitely more of a character driven story with extensive amounts of introspection and flashbacks that set the tone of the narrative. With this in mind, the pacing is still solid and fast enough to engage readers who prefer stories that move quickly.

The structure of the novella is unique. There are only a few chapters but each one is marked by some significant act of violence against individuals of color. In every instance, Onyebuchi handles the situations with brutal honesty and powerful prose.

We follow Ella as she struggles with her mother’s failing health and her brother’s time in prison while she occasionally glimpses the violent deaths of those around her. We also get snippets of Kevin’s POV as he tries to simply survive behind bars and then later in a sort of halfway house community. Throughout the book Ella and Kevia share moments together through a telepathic link they share.

Riot Baby is weighed down with a lot of heavy themes centered on current social issues: police brutality, racism within the prison system, and the failings of our prison system to rehabilitate released inmates, to name a few. Honestly, its heartbreaking and not for those looking for a light read but its also beautiful, eye opening and extremely important.

Overall, I gave it 4/5 stars with the caveat that I am still processing this one. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed books by Angie Thomas, Jesmyn Ward, and Jaqueline Woodson

This one was probably more of a 3.5 star read for me. I liked what the author was trying to say. It was an emotional story involving two young black kids with superpowers, Ella and Kev. Ella is very, very angry and with good reason. Kev is in prison, basically because he is black. This story has a lot of police brutality and racism and it was very hard to read at times, with good reason. Things like this do happen, so I do think that it's an important story. My issue was that I didn't really appreciate the writing style. It was very long winded and rambling at times. I also had questions about how the kids got their powers and those things were never answered. Powerful book though.

Kev was born in 1992 amidst riots in Compton and later ends up incarcerated for existing as a black man in America. His sister Ella has a strange power to see the future and channel others’ suffering into action. Through in-person and supernatural communication, the siblings plan to fight against racism and injustice in the apocalyptic future Ella sees coming.

This short novel had me enraptured right from the start. Ella's powers are strange and compelling, and the way her story weaves into Kev's story was really intriguing. The sense of place and way of engaging with systemic racism are phenomenal. I just wish there was more - more time, more character development, more details on what's to come. If you want a quick, engaging read that you won't want to put down, you should definitely check out RIOT BABY.

Riot Baby was a mixed bag for me - emotionally, it was a bulls-eye, with a very clear view on what it wanted to say and what it wanted to evoke, but in a narrative sense, it was confusing. It is about two siblings - Kev and Ella, and takes place from a little before Kev's birth to his present, and it is not until two-thirds of the book that you realize that part of it has futuristic elements.

Anyway, back to the beginning - we meet Ella, who is gifted with her Thing, which includes everything from telekinesis, reading pasts and futures, reading thoughts, astral projection, traveling and shielding, and Kev, who is her younger brother, and doesn't show signs of powers like hers. Seeing their story, in third person for Ella and first person for Kev, we see them growing up in a violent neighborhood in a country that doesn't care for their lives, and in Ella's case her anger and her uncontrolled powers are a dangerous mix that Kev tries to steer clear of. Fast forward a few years, he is in prison and she visits him, while also doing her Thing and working on it. Fast forward some more years, and even after Kev's on parole, he realizes that the outside is not very different from the inside and is just a variation on it. Ella, meanwhile, has been gathering her anger to sharpen it to a purpose.

The thing about the writing is that the sentences are sometimes winding and difficult to read (in a reading comprehension way, not content matter), scenes are all disjointed and without much narrative flow. Suddenly you are propelled who knows how much time further, and you have to discern from the clues how much time has passed and how they got there. I also wish the relationship between them was explored a bit more, as Ella's reminding Kev towards the end, when he wished to forget seemed like a complicated scene that needed more in it. However, the book is not as much about the characters or the details of the sci-fi elements, as much as it is about rage gathering in Ella over centuries of violence being meted out, as she can see every incident and know what exactly happened. It recalls some key incidents and Black people who were killed by police brutality, and also talks about how Black women are treated by the medical system, how danger to them is ignored. The story works through Kev and Ella than being about them, and recalls injustice and discrimination, both past and present, and how in the guise of betterment, different types of cages are still being constructed around Black people. Slavery ends but another kind of indenture begins in the form of incarceration; incarceration is reduced, but another form of indenture begins in the form of Sponsored communities. The book is very good at getting its point across in a novella length, that explores so much of the past and present of American history through a Black lens.

While a bit difficult to read through, Riot Baby makes a stunning case for a revolution.

Riot Baby is a primal scream of a novella, ranging through America's racist history into a near-future version of the country that continues the climate emergency and militarization of the police.

Our protagonists are siblings Ella and Kev, both of whom are gifted -- Ella more noticeably than Kev -- with what they call a Thing, a special power whose limits and boundaries they do not fully understand. Kev was born during the riots that followed the acquittal of the officers who brutally beat up Rodney King, and he grows up in -- well -- this world. In the exact way these things are prone to happening, Kev ends up at Rikers Island, while Ella travels the nation, both of them experiencing and bearing witness to Black pain under a regime of American white supremacy.

Riot Baby is dizzying in its scope, ranging at speed through centuries of American history, from lynchings under Jim Crow to the racist spectacle of the Angola Prison Rodeo. "They called it Angola. In case you forgot it all comes back to Africa." At times it can get overwhelming, but that's, of course, the idea: White oppression of black Americans is foundational to this country, written into our constitution, and black free will -- whether in the form of rebellions against slavery or protests after police shootings -- has always been met with violence. Ella and Kev are practiced in witnessing and experiencing that violence. It has shaped their lives from their very first days.

Onyebuchi's writing in this book is stunning. His evocation of American history, in all its messiness and filth, will blow you away. I don't know what else to say about this book except that it sets a new standard for the subgenre of urban fantasy.[1. I mean, I say this, but urban fantasy is really not my subgenre, so take this with a pinch of salt. I've read like... four urban fantasy novels total, and two of those were by one author. BUT EVEN SO.] The conclusion of Riot Baby is at once shocking and inevitable. Given what Ella and Kev have seen -- which is our exact world, the one that every black American lives through -- it's impossible for them to land on anything but revolution.

Riot Baby was a book that I immediately fell in love with and only felt more rewarded by as its pages went on. By the end of the first chapter, I was Googling Tochi Onyebuchi to find out what else he’d written, adding his books to my wishlist for future purchases and making sure his name stuck in my mind. Halfway through chapter three, I was back to Googling the author, wanting to read the various interviews he’s been giving to help publicize this Tor release and to learn more about him. By the end of Riot Baby, I felt both angry and hopeful, and convinced I’d just found a new favorite author and an incredible new book to gush over and recommend to everybody.

What makes Onyebuchi’s latest so amazing is its very particular viewpoint and its examination — and condemnation — of modern day America. This is a dystopian novel, centered largely around the present day, and with only some brief detours into a near-future, as seen through the eyes of young black siblings. Kevin was born in 1992 just as Los Angeles was being consumed by riots following the non-guilty verdict awarded to the police officers following the brutal beating of Rodney King. His older sister, Ella, is gifted with unnatural powers that can make her either a savior or a horror, or perhaps both simultaneously.

In an interview with Nerd Daily, Onyebuchi credits the birth of this book with his inability to find a Magneto Was Right t-shirt, and that’s as succinct an elevator pitch as this book needs! Riot Baby is grounded very much in the black experience in America, with its major touchstones being the violent, incendiary events that highlight the present-day police state African Americans live in. From the LA Riots to the police massacre of Sean Bell, Onyebuchi has crafted a violent, dangerous tale where any missteps or incursions by Otherness are met with an outsized, excessive use of force and bloody assault as response, in an attempt to not just quell but destroy the black community.

It’s hard to argue against Onyebuchi’s viewpoint, and it highlights a very real struggle in black America, one rife with systemic institutionalized racism, an America where blacks are killed at disproportionately higher rates by police, particularly if unarmed, for various crimes like reading a book in their car, or for changing a flat tire, or for living in their own apartment, or for talking on a cell phone in their back yard, or for being disabled, or, or, or, or, or, or…. The list goes on and on, highlighting the concept of Two Americas in articulate, intelligent, and depressingly real detail.

Some will no doubt ignore Riot Baby for being “too political,” which is often code for “too real” or “too liberal” or “too progressive,” and they’ll be doing themselves a real disservice. Yes, Riot Baby is real, despite Ella’s powers and despite Onyebuchi’s much too-real near-future utilization of drone and bioinformatics and algorithmically-driven technology by police forces to maintain the status quo of oppressive inequality and help keep people afraid. Too political? Too real? Too damn right it is! And, frankly, when it comes to books like this, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Riot Baby is righteously angry and necessary reading. It’s also the first real Must Have title of 2020, and an early contender for best of the year in my mind. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go Google Tochi Onyebuchi again and see if his next book has a release date yet.

Original and riveting. Ella's power feels dangerous and glorious. She cannot quite protect her brother, Kev - in spite of her abilities she is still very human. I liked the open ending.

In this brisk 176-page story, Onyebuchi masterfully weaves together fantasy and history and makes the reader confront our country's injustice and sustained oppression of marginalized communities.

Ella and Kev, the latter the titular 'Riot Baby', have gifts. Born on the night of the 1992 LA riots (after police were acquitted in Rodney King's beating), Kev and his family relocate to New York City. I don't want to say too much about the plot because of spoilers but the prose is gripping and sticks with you long after you finish.

Onyebuchi shows that for black Americans, our society from the 1990s to today is not dystopia but their reality. He deftly presents the trauma of the carceral system on black men and their families, loss of autonomy under the surveillance state, and hope for justice and freedom.

RIOT BABY is a necessary edition to high school and college courses that focus on contemporary U.S. history and politics. I would pair it with Ava DuVernay's "13th" and "When They See Us" for students to explore key moments and themes in our contemporary society.

This book takes the headline ( police brutality, incarceration rates, systemic racism) of so many of our news cycles, and frames them within a a fantasy/ science fictional lens. Approaching these subjects through literature is not new, however, adding these fantasy almost mystical elements magnifies them and highlights just how brutal they are.

From the beginning, this powerful novella delivers a powerful punch letting you know exactly what you'll be getting. The novella spans two coast and decades where we witness that nothing changes for Black Americans. The fantasy elements also added so much depth to the story allowing us to view multiple timelines of this ever increasing issue. The writing was also great. I will say, however, that some of the time jumps took me out of the story and were a little confusing. It made me pause and have to reread the scene a few times to understand what was going on. That didn't take from the story at all, but as mentioned it took me out from the clear smooth narration.

I will definitely be recommending this to my library patrons!

This was phenomenal. A great mix of sci-fiction, social commentary, dystopia. Onyebuchi took a relatively mundane thing and made it into a very poignant and succinct story. I loved this so much and I was hooked from the very beginning. Definitely will be recommending this and shouting from the rooftops about how good this novella is.

Sitting at 173 pages, Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi, was a fast pace and intense novella. Combing elements of science fiction, dystopian ideals, racism, supernatural powers, love, and family, this story will pull you in faster than you can say ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’. ⁣⁣
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Although it’s short, you really need to pay attention while reading . At nearly halfway through the book I went back to reread from the beginning because, I thought I was reading too fast and missed something. ⁣⁣
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Told from two points of view, Ella, who has special powers. Can make herself invisible, destroy items with her mind and time travel. Her brother, Kev, born in the midst of the Rodney King riot, is not only book smart, he also knows how to handle himself on the streets. Moving forward, Kev ends up being incarcerated, and his experience in prison is horrendous. We find that the only thing that keeps him sane, are the visits from his sister.⁣⁣
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This book is very interesting in so many ways, created off real time events and this dystopian world Onyebuchi crafted really will pulled you into the story. There are some dark and graphic sense, so prepare yourself. Thank you Tor.com for gifting me this copy.