Binti: Home

The second book in the Binti trilogy asks whether you can ever go home again. In the first book, Binti defied her family to run away from home and attend a galactic university. Now that she's been studying there for a year, she decides that it's time to return home to make amends with her family and participate in a coming-of-age ritual. Of course, nothing goes according to plan.

Binti: Home was nearly twice as long as the first book (at a whopping 160 pages), and I was right that the extra length made it easier for me to get past the style and sink into the story. Which was great, because there was a lot of interesting stuff going on here. Binti has to navigate her own goals and desires and balance them against those of her family and society. She learns that she's going to have to make certain sacrifices to pursue the life she wants, and she grieves their loss.

Hand in hand with this is an exploration of the tension between tradition and progress. Binti learns more about her family history, and it leaves her more confused than ever. The book ends on a cliffhanger, and I'm really excited to see how it all resolves in the next installment.

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