Sunny feels out of her depth as she and her friends fight with Otokoto and Ekwensu, the dangerous masquerade he brings to the physical world. She learns this when scholars reveal that Sunny and her friends are an Oha coven assembled to take down the ritual killer Black Hat Otokoto, who was Sunny’s grandmother’s mentee and killer. But gradually, Sunny comes to see the value of prioritizing the collective good. At first, Sunny resents the Leopard philosophy that prioritizes education and the collective good over an individual person’s safety, because it’s scary for her to know that her teachers are willing to put her and her friends’ lives at risk. However, though she suspects that her maternal grandmother was a Leopard Person, her mother remains unwilling to tell Sunny anything about her family history. As Sunny spends the next few months attending both Lamb (nonmagical) and Leopard school, she becomes happier and increasingly secure in who she is.

Sunny learns that she’s a Leopard free agent, and that her albinism is what makes her a powerful Leopard Person: it means that she already has one foot in the wilderness (the spirit world), so she should be able to make herself invisible, manipulate time, and receive premonitions from beings in the spirit world. She meets Orlu and Chichi the next day after school, and they soon introduce her to Anatov, who inducts Sunny into Leopard (magical) society. Sunny’s life changes the day she sees a vision of the end of the world in a candle flame. In addition to making her so sensitive to the sun that she can’t play soccer, her favorite sport, Sunny’s albinism also makes her a target for bullying. However, Sunny doesn’t feel secure in her identity as a Black Nigerian, as she was born in New York and is albino. Sunny, the protagonist of the novel, is a 12-year-old Nigerian girl.

Akata book