164 pages
Published 2017
Read December 6
Rating: 3 out of 5
I found the first Binti book promising but uneven, its sweep and creativity muddled by middling prose. Home, the second Binti novella, feels much the same.
Binti, the first of Earth’s Himba people to study at the prestigious Oomza University, feels strange, uncharacteristic fury deep inside, even when she “trees” (accesses higher mathematics through a kind of focused meditation). She leaves Oomza to return home for a cleansing pilgrimage. She is accompanied by her friend Okwu, who is a Meduse. The peace treaty between the Meduse and Earth’s Khoush people is still new, the memories of their bloody war still fresh. And their ship to Earth is the same ship which Okwu and its people attacked Binti and her classmates, when Binti first left for Oomza.
After the “You killed all my new friends, but I guess we can be friends now” turn was glossed over in the first book, it was almost a relief to find that Binti’s trauma, and the need to process it, is prominent in Home.
As always, I enjoyed Okorafor’s worldbuilding, its space opera future that doesn’t center white people or Western expectations.
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