Binti

Binti felt like a story that Octavia Butler might have written. Which is high praise for Nnendi Okorafor who writes just as widely and deeply as Butler did, exploring themes of of power and communication and always centering her books on black protagonists, which causes her themes to resonate on multiple levels.

As with Butler's work, I struggled a bit with Okorafor's style in this story. It's straight-forward and stark, whereas I prefer my prose to be at least a little bit purple. The lack of embellishing language makes it harder for me to get invested in the tale. And while I can usually find my feet near the beginning of a 300 page novel, it was a bit harder with a 90 page novella. I felt like I was still acclimating to this world when the story ended.

That said, the story itself was interesting and challenging. Binti is on her way to a galactic university when her ship is attacked by an alien species that's at war with another faction of humans - a faction Binti's own people have never gotten along with particularly well. Despite the trauma, Binti has to find a way to first communicate with and then work with the hostile aliens in order to save her own life.

The story raises a lot of questions about loyalty and expectations. I wish it had flowed a little better, but I'm still glad I read it, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy. With slightly longer books, I'm hoping that I can fall into and enjoy the story a bit more.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Crown of Swords

Image
The seventh book of the  Wheel of Time  series is where many people agree that the series takes a dive in quality. Although I think it's less that anything changes significantly and more that people get tired of how stagnant the books are becoming. Nearly nothing happens in this book. Jordan still has serious issues writing female characters and romantic relationships. The world is continuing to be expanded on, and the rules of the magic system are slowly (so slowly) becoming more clear. But this is also a step down in terms of length. We go from a few 1000 page books in a row to one that's only 850 pages (and the next is less than 700!). Combine that with my brilliant idea to read  A Tale of Two Cities  right before this book, and I positively flew through it. I think you have to reach a sort of zen state to get through this series. There are a lot of side plots, a lot of world building, a lot of descriptions of clothing. Rather than just hating certain characters, you hav
Read more

The People We Keep

This was a really sweet coming of age tale about finding your way and finding your family. Aprils' mother walked out when she was little and her father wasn't much more present. By the time she's sixteen, April is basically on her own, stuck in a small town where everyone looks down on her and even her father mostly pretends that she doesn't exist. And then she realizes that she can leave, too. So April heads out for life on the road, working odd jobs, writing and singing songs, making friends and fleeing before anyone can get too close. And through it all her music sustains her. My favorite part of this book, hands-down, was the soundtrack. April's love of music, and the way the author uses it to set the scene and drill right into her emotional state was fantastic. I kept having to put the book down so I could bring up songs on youtube and listen to them while I read certain passages. This was just an overall enjoyable book. I had a lot of sympathy for April being
Read more

Parable of the Sower: The Graphic Novel

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.
Read more