Bookish Thoughts

In the final installment of the Binti  trilogy, Binti goes through some serious growing pains. The previous books had her discovering new aspects of herself. Everything she learned seemed to take her further from her family of origin, even the things she learned about the history of that family. And so here she must learn how to balance all this growth with staying true to herself and her values. This book, and the whole trilogy really, explore how far you can stray from your roots while remaining rooted. How much can you change and still be recognizable as the same person? What's that essential bit of you-ness that remains immutable? By the end, Binti is both unrecognizable, having been modified with alien DNA, microbes, and technology, and essentially the same person, a math whiz who values knowledge and harmony. She's still in the process of accepting all the change she's gone through. But the ending is optimistic that she'll fully integrate her new experiences w...

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 ...

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 Bint...

There are only so many stories. Or perhaps I should say that there are only so many plots. A person goes on a journey. A stranger comes to town. Two people fall in love. You could argue that there's only one story: a person goes on a journey. You might shift the viewpoint (so he comes to town). The journey might be physical or emotional or mental. It all boils down to a person starting in one place and ending up in a different place, and the story is how they get there. When you read as much as I do, these structures become familiar, comfortable. Stories are interesting because of the details they provide, the different ways they can get you to see the world. Reading about the same people doing the same things all the time gets boring because, as I said, there are only so many stories to tell. But reading about different people doing those same things. That's how you learn and grow. The familiarity of the story makes it easier to learn about different cultures and ways of lif...

It took me a while to recognize the shape of this story. It's billed as science fiction, but it doesn't read like the science fiction I'm used to. I spent a lot of time looking for clues that this story took place in the future as opposed to the past. They're there, but they're subtle and not really relevant to the story. Tigers are extinct. Computers are ubiquitous but old and rarely used. It eventually became clear that the creation myth in this world is also the story of the end of the world as we know it. But this book actually has more elements of fantasy. Magic is real. Our main character is a sorcerer-in-training. She can turn into animals and visit the world of the dead. Her lover is also magically inclined and a fantastic healer, though he doesn't pass the initiation rite necessary to becoming a sorcerer. There's a wonderful amount of magic and even that hallmark of fantasy literature: dragons. This all helps to obscure the fact that the book take...