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A review by hedsek
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
2.0
I really really wanted to like this book. It has so many promising elements: the relationship between the Himba culture and the work they do creating Astrolabes, the juxtaposition between Binti's youth in which she has been mostly isolated from other cultures and her decision to go to Oomza Uni and travel through space, and the way in which people can use maths to manipulate the world. All amazingly creative ideas and concepts, but I feel like 90 pages just wasn't enough space to really flesh them out which made this a pretty unsatisfying read for me.
However, most frustrating to me were the many moments in which people's motivations were completely unclear to me. The Meduse apparently hate the Khoush specifically, but their goal in this story is to retrieve their chief's stinger from Oomza Uni, which is a place with many different humans and aliens, so why do they target the Khoush? And why is the Uni just suddenly okay with them murdering a bunch of their students? I get that they don't want to further escalate the conflict, but they didn't even mention it. Also, Binti is discriminated at her home planet by the Khoush, but luckily she quickly makes friends as they travel to Uni. However, when she arrives at Uni people are weirded out by her culture even though there are literal insect people and people with roots for a head? I guess these problems could also relate to the length of the novel to some degree, as I mostly just felt like something was missing that would explain why they behave this way.
Finally, the writing style really was not my kind of thing. I felt like the same kinds of phrases (for example: "[speech]!" I said/shouted/etc., my eyes filling with tears/my face squeezed with pain/etc.) were used very often which made the writing feel quite repetitive.
All in all, Binti is a very imaginative and interesting story with a lot of potential. I would actually love to see a longer novel or a tv series set in this universe or with Binti as the main character in which there is a lot of attention to world building and culture. This particular form unfortunately didn't really work for me.
However, most frustrating to me were the many moments in which people's motivations were completely unclear to me.
Finally, the writing style really was not my kind of thing. I felt like the same kinds of phrases (for example: "[speech]!" I said/shouted/etc., my eyes filling with tears/my face squeezed with pain/etc.) were used very often which made the writing feel quite repetitive.
All in all, Binti is a very imaginative and interesting story with a lot of potential. I would actually love to see a longer novel or a tv series set in this universe or with Binti as the main character in which there is a lot of attention to world building and culture. This particular form unfortunately didn't really work for me.