Genre: Sci-fi – Young Person Goes On Adventure
Basic Summary: Binti gets accepted into a prestigious school. Her family says “Binti no.” while she says “Binti yes.” Encounters killer jellyfish like people and homesickness.
Rating: 3/5
Warnings: There is violence and racism. Not necessarily in that order.
Review:
Binti is a short read at 96 pages. The novella starts out with Binti leaving home and going on a space craft to Oomza University which she had been accepted into. The plot point of her split feelings on leaving home and how it would be difficult to go back home is apparent in the first pages. There are beautiful passages where Binti explains her family and there are passages which show how other people react to her and of her being HImba (mainly the Khoush which is another group of humans). You could feel Binti’s inner conflict in these passages and while reading, I wondered, can she go home? What’s going to happen when she goes? Will they accept her back?
Also, I like Binti as a character. She’s well rounded and it’s easy to get attached to her. When Binti was starting to make friends on the space craft they were on, I was cheering for her. Then, the Meduse came. They are an alien race who, when I read the description, thought of giant killer jellyfish. (Which makes sense because when I googled Meduse…it is a jellyfish…) The Meduse proceed to kill everyone but her.
This is a bit where the story kinda lost me. It’s not that I didn’t find the Meduse interesting but rather, any other character than Binti and maybe Okwu aren’t really given any depth. I’m not going to give spoilers away as to what happens. It does feel as if the story is a bit big for the page count. There are details I want to know. Before Binti started traveling to Oomza University, I didn’t know there was this conflict. That in itself is not a problem but when the Meduse are on the craft, I don’t really know the stakes. Binti explains it a bit through narrative but it’s still hard to pinpoint down.
Overall, I simply wish this book hadn’t been a novella and really explored the intergalactic conflicts as well as the internal conflicts.
May you get lost in a book,
Chrissy