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A review by richardbakare
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
2.0
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor is an Afro-Futurism book powered by an unfettered imagination. Okorafor exploits the young and naive protagonist first person point of view to visualize a fantasy world akin to Star Wars. Our author is clearly a dreamer and her world building reflects that.
That said, trying to maintain interest in Binti’s storyline was not without struggle. What was a swift and promising start loses steam and becomes too predictable near the end. There was a lot of opportunity for ever more expansive world building that never materializes. I wonder if the first person perspective hindered this story more than it helped.
This was also a time when the brevity of the book was a problem. Often a novella reads swiftly but is packed with meaning between each line. There was none of that density of meaning in this one. I suppose Okorafor’s goal is to establish a violent and perplexing space journey that sprawls over multiple books in the series. I can’t find a reason to pick up the others in the series though.
That said, trying to maintain interest in Binti’s storyline was not without struggle. What was a swift and promising start loses steam and becomes too predictable near the end. There was a lot of opportunity for ever more expansive world building that never materializes. I wonder if the first person perspective hindered this story more than it helped.
This was also a time when the brevity of the book was a problem. Often a novella reads swiftly but is packed with meaning between each line. There was none of that density of meaning in this one. I suppose Okorafor’s goal is to establish a violent and perplexing space journey that sprawls over multiple books in the series. I can’t find a reason to pick up the others in the series though.