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sophia_sol) wrote2019-10-06 07:02 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2019-10-06 07:02 pm
Binti and Binti: Home, by Nnedi Okorafor
Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor
A teenage girl from a tribe of people who never leave Earth or their homeland goes away to university on another planet. But her ship is attacked by aliens who have a longstanding pattern of violence with another group of humans.
I liked...everything about the book except the plot. It went too quickly from a whole species being perfectly okay with killing an entire ship full of students, to Binti being friends/family with one of them. I'd have been very happy to read this book if it was just about the various difficulties to do with her going away from home and to university and trying to find her place and all that, but the alien plot just didn't work for me.
Binti: Home, by Nnedi Okorafor
Sequel to Binti. I liked this one much better than the first. It focuses on Binti's sense of who she is: her identity, and her home. Which can be hard questions! After a year away at university on another planet away from her insular tribe, Binti decides to return to her home for a visit with a purpose, but home is not the same as she left it, and neither is she.
Also she's dealing with residual trauma from the events of the last book, so I'm glad to see that the horrifying things that happened there aren't being shrugged off as no big deal to the degree it felt like to me at the end of the last book.
I did feel that the ending of this book was rather, uh, not an ending, since it starts up a whole new set of major happenings and does nothing with it. Maybe it's setting up another sequel? I don't love this way of doing that, if so. Also, Binti's development of a new understanding of herself is a main theme of the book and I don't feel like she's actually integrated that knowledge by the end, so it feels like the main arc of the book is not actually completed.
And overall I feel like this duology would be better served by not being sff, which is always weird when I find myself feeling this way! I think this is only the second time in my memory? Usually I feel the opposite!
Despite my complaints though I really did enjoy this book.
A teenage girl from a tribe of people who never leave Earth or their homeland goes away to university on another planet. But her ship is attacked by aliens who have a longstanding pattern of violence with another group of humans.
I liked...everything about the book except the plot. It went too quickly from a whole species being perfectly okay with killing an entire ship full of students, to Binti being friends/family with one of them. I'd have been very happy to read this book if it was just about the various difficulties to do with her going away from home and to university and trying to find her place and all that, but the alien plot just didn't work for me.
Binti: Home, by Nnedi Okorafor
Sequel to Binti. I liked this one much better than the first. It focuses on Binti's sense of who she is: her identity, and her home. Which can be hard questions! After a year away at university on another planet away from her insular tribe, Binti decides to return to her home for a visit with a purpose, but home is not the same as she left it, and neither is she.
Also she's dealing with residual trauma from the events of the last book, so I'm glad to see that the horrifying things that happened there aren't being shrugged off as no big deal to the degree it felt like to me at the end of the last book.
I did feel that the ending of this book was rather, uh, not an ending, since it starts up a whole new set of major happenings and does nothing with it. Maybe it's setting up another sequel? I don't love this way of doing that, if so. Also, Binti's development of a new understanding of herself is a main theme of the book and I don't feel like she's actually integrated that knowledge by the end, so it feels like the main arc of the book is not actually completed.
And overall I feel like this duology would be better served by not being sff, which is always weird when I find myself feeling this way! I think this is only the second time in my memory? Usually I feel the opposite!
Despite my complaints though I really did enjoy this book.
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