Harmattan Season by Tochi Onyebuchi Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, fantasy mystery
Pages: 240
Published by Tor Books on May 27, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
Award-winning author Tochi Onyebuchi’s new standalone novel is hardboiled fantasy Raymond Chandler meets P. Djèlí Clark in a postcolonial West Africa
Fortune always left whatever room I walked into, which is why I don’t leave my place much these days.
Veteran and private eye Boubacar doesn’t need much—least of all trouble—but trouble always seems to find him. Work has dried up, and he’d rather be left alone to deal with his bills as the Harmattan rolls in to coat the city in dust, but Bouba is a down on his luck deux fois, suspended between two cultures and two worlds.
When a bleeding woman stumbles onto his doorway, only to vanish just as quickly, Bouba reluctantly finds himself enmeshed in the secrets of a city boiling on the brink of violence. The French occupiers are keen to keep the peace at any cost, and the indigenous dugulen have long been shattered into restless factions vying for a chance to reclaim their lost heritage and abilities. As each hardwon clue reveals horrifying new truths, Bouba may have to carve out parts of himself he’s long kept hidden, and decide what he’s willing to offer next.
From the visionary author of Riot Baby and Goliath, Harmattan Season is a gripping fantasy noir in the tradition of Chandler, Hammond, and Christie that will have you by the throat—both dryly funny and unforgettably evocative.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
My Review:
The Harmattan wind, dry and dusty, blows into West Africa from the Sahara and coats everything in dust. But this is a story about an entirely different kind of dust, the dust of old bones and old memories of bad deeds and good old days that have turned into the dust of history.
And it’s a mystery. On that dusty surface, it’s a mystery, and it’s a mystery all the way down to those dusty old bones – just not the same kind of mystery. At least, not until it is.
Boubacar is one of those people who, if it wasn’t for bad luck, wouldn’t have any luck at all. He’s down at heel, down on his luck, behind on his rent, all that’s showing up on his doorstep are bills and yet more bills.
He’s a private detective who desperately needs a case – but he’s given up on expecting one. He’s certain that all of his bad luck is the result of a curse, but he knows that’s one case he’s unlikely to solve.
When the girl knocks on his door, he’s expecting bill collectors. Or the police, coming to arrest him for something he hasn’t done. Or at least that he hasn’t done yet. Instead there’s a young woman bleeding on his doorstep, clutching her wounded side and begging him to hide her.
So he does, even though he knows the police will be right behind her. He thinks he’s stopped caring.
But he starts caring again, not because the police DO arrest him – although they do – but because the next time he sees the girl she’s dead and FLOATING over the site of a massive explosion – along with most of the debris and destruction caused by whatever blew up the street.
Leaving Boubacar attached to a case that’s likely to break him, one way or another. A case where, in the end, he’s both the victim and the original perpetrator. Or at least one of them. A crime that others are more than desperate enough to see buried – along with Boubacar.
Escape Rating B: I finished this book with a whole host of mixed feelings, because I was fascinated with what I got and intrigued about what I learned but frustrated beyond measure by the parts I had to tease out without nearly enough clues.
I’m not referring to the mystery itself, because that’s the part that absolutely worked.
The setting of this story is just a bit nebulous, but I think the reasons that I teased out for that made sense. We don’t know precisely which West African country this takes place in, but the harmattan puts it somewhere in West Africa. The country is a former French colony, but based on the political climate described, its post colonial setting doesn’t feel all that post. More that legal colonialism has morphed into economic colonialism which feels all too real and that the deliberate lack of geographic specificity allows the setting to stand in for a LOT of very real places.
What made the story work was the way that Boubacar digs and keeps digging. The mystery starts simply, a woman is missing, later found dead in equally mysterious circumstances.
But Boubacar doesn’t let go no matter how much he’s encouraged – often with other people’s fists – to do so. And as he digs he brushes past the simplicity of the missing persons case and into the depths of political corruption – and he keeps going into what dirty deeds all of that corruption is moving to prevent from seeing the light of day.
Which is where he finds his own sins, his own complicity, and his desire to stop covering up. No matter what it costs.
I did enjoy this for the mystery, for the way it explored the effects of colonialism through its characters and their actions, and for Boubacar’s wry voice and hesitant pursuit of redemption. The story reads like a combination of the hardboiled detective fiction of Raymond Chandler with the fantasy worlds of P. Djeli Clark, particularly the early novellas of the Dead Djinn Universe like The Haunting of Tram Car 015. Harmattan Season also gave this reader, at least, some of the same feels as the works of Nnedi Okorafor and Moses Ose Utomi. They are all readalikes for each other, and if you have been loving the rise of both science fiction and fantasy mystery Harmattan Season any and all of the above might also be your jam.
Reviewer’s Note: I did have one huge frustration with this story. I felt like I was missing a lot because the text included what felt like important words and phrases that I didn’t understand and could not find a translation source for. This may be because I read an electronic arc and that the published work will include translations not present in the advance reading copy. The online translations programs utterly failed at translation, which could have any number of causes from euro-centricity to jargon or slang or neologisms or creativity on the part of the author. I still got into Harmattan Season, but I’m left with the feeling that I would have gotten into it more deeply if I’d been able to grasp the bits that eluded me.
I read Harmattan Season too, and was intrigued to read your take on the novel. It proved to be quite similar to mine – although far more eloquent!