Biafra : t’s the Year 2172: Time to Fight the Bloody Biafran War Again

Onyii is all of 15, but she is battle-worn on every level. She sports a robotic arm — her human one was severed in conflict — and worries she’ll lose her sister, Ify, at any minute. As one of the oldest in a camp of rebel girls based in southeastern Nigeria in the year 2172, she’s an authority on wartime survival. Nigeria is in the grips of civil war, one very similar to the real Biafran War that ravaged the Igbo tribe in 1967-70 as they attempted to secede from Nigeria. In WAR GIRLS (Razorbill, 464 pp., $17.99; ages 12 and up) a series opener from Tochi Onyebuchi (“Beasts Made of Night”), the conflict drags on. Factor in climate change, nuclear disasters and space colonies, and the ultimate dystopian universe reveals itself — part tech-slick playground, part cautionary tale.

The war girls’ camp, made up of child soldiers like Onyii and refugees like her younger charge, Ify, is on constant alert. For the last year, enemy aerial mechs, massive humanoid robots, have been flying overhead, unable to detect the Biafran camp right underneath. The war girls, who have mechs, too, are hiding in plain sight thanks to a signal dampener, one of the many technological flourishes that Onyebuchi employs, mostly to capable effect. After a suicide bomber infiltrates the camp, they are attacked, and Onyii and Ify, who tell the story in alternating chapters, are separated.

At first glance, Ify gets the better deal. Warmly accepted by her Nigerian captors, she’s praised for her technological acumen, especially for developing the Accent, a tool that allows her to hack into other operating systems and control them. Onyii, on the other hand, turns into the Demon of Biafra, a killing machine looking to avenge her sister’s (presumed) death. Sniffing Chukwu, a mineral mixture “that will numb her aching joints and slow her racing mind,” Onyii also feasts on the drug of war: “She got a taste for combat as a child. And like a child given their first sip of palm wine, she had hated the taste. Now, hate or love has nothing to do with it. She needs it.”