A review by halfextinguishedthoughts
The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor

What a wonderful, powerful series! (This is a review for all three but contains I think no spoilers!) My emotional reaction right after reading each book was slightly different. After Binti, I felt that sense of energy. There was such a build-up throughout the book and at the end I felt like I was standing at the edge of a precipice. Reading Home was like stepping off the edge. The universe sort of pinpoints down as Binti travels back home and we watch as that narrowed lens is forced open. All that energy sustains the whole book. There’s so much that happens and I couldn’t put it down. In The Night Masquerade everything that was building finally accumulated. Once again I didn’t want to put the book down and yet I stalled because I didn’t want it to end. 

My biggest takeaway from this was I want more. I wanted to know more about the world and universe Binti lives in. I wanted to get those background details and dive into the history. The world-building gives you a taste of incredible and I wish that we could get more. Trees grow upside down and the ships are living. I loved the environmental connections and commentary running through these books. We, I, often think of space as sterile and remote but in Binti, it is anything but that. Space here is vibrant and alive, the natural world doesn’t end at the break of our atmosphere. 

The Binti series deals with identity and culture. Throughout the series, we see Binti not only be forced to grow up like a ‘normal’ girl. She moves away to go to school without her parents knowing and strikes out alone in the world, and is forced to meet new people. That alone is so much but Binti is also a victim of a massacre. She is a survivor when all the other people on the ship were killed. The encounters with the Meduse, the perpetrators, leave her changed both mentally and physically (she becomes a part of the Meduse). She struggles with all of these changes. Is she still Himba, her culture from home, or is she now Meduse? 

What complicates this is that Okwu, the Meduse who goes to school with Binti after the attack, becomes her partner. Because Binti navigated the attack and showed physical Meduse attributes, people equate them together. Binti also feels this. She leans on Okwu for support but at the same time can’t help but wonder if it was the one that killed her friends, if it was the one who changed her. This is only the tip of the iceberg. 

Binti as a character brings strength to these novellas. We get her internal struggles and also see the external struggles with racism, navigating new cultures, and finding strength when no one believes in her. Binti drives this story forward. When the world seems bleak and despite everything people still fight and kill each other, Binti rises from the ashes and finds something to hope for. 

What I loved:

-The characters and their arcs

-The world and magic

-Emotional Beats

-The Cultures

What I wanted more of:

-More information on the world and magic! I loved it

-Answers to some of the questions left

-Just more stories with Binti

tw: Death, Panic attacks/disorders, Violence, Racism, War, Gore, elements of body horror