Winner of the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novella Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.Knowledge … customs.
Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti’s stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach.
If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself but first she has to make it there, alive.
PRAISE FOR BINTI
“Binti is a supreme read about a sexy, edgy Afropolitan in space It’s a wondrous combination of extra-terrestrial adventure and age-old African diplomacy. Unforgettable ” Wanuri Kahiu, award-winning Kenyan film director of Punzi and From a Whisper
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It’s amazing what a good writer can achieve in short form; an imaginative world combined with a story that tackles difficult questions about prejudice, hate and acceptance. And it’s entertaining to boot.
Binti shocked me. I love old-fashioned sci-fi, and this delivers in spades. In addition, it provides a different cultural outlook and terrifying aliens. I won’t give away the ending, but I will say this is the first of a trilogy and I adored all of them.
Wow.
It’s been a very long time since I’ve read a novella. It was actually a bit difficult to get back into the swing of things. Since there’s limited length to it, this book fully goes in with the toss-you-into-the-deep-end-of-the-pool approach for the science and culture of the universe Binti lives in. Meaning, there’s very limited explainations for what things mean or do or are significant. The only reason Binti will explain why she does something is if someone questions it within the book. So you’ve got to use your context clues to figure some stuff out. (Incidently, I think I’m getting worse at this as I’m getting older. Middle School me only liked this approach to science fiction books- if authors explained what someone was/meant to me in a story I almost hated it, now I appreciate it. Maybe I’m just getting lazy…) This totally worked for the novella as it immediately immersed you in Binti’s world and you ended up feeling a bit of that sink-or-swim mental challange that Binti herself faces (on a, thankfully, much smaller and less fate-of-the-universe-hangs-in-the-balance scale). Binti herself…I adore her. I just spend the entire time wanting to meet her and spend hours talking to her. The other characters (presumably due to length) do not get as fleshed out as her, but Binti is three demensional. She is alive. She breathes.
The story itself is equal mix of never-seen-that-before and seen-that-loads-of-times. It touches on themes that have been touched on before, but it expresses them with a sort of elegant punch to the gut style that I haven’t seen anywhere else. (Elegant punch to the gut is a phrase I literally have just made up to describe this. It’s all I’ve been able to come up with.)
I’d highly recommend giving this a read. It’s short and quick, but the emotional roller coaster is there, and Binti is someone everyone should meet.