Book Review: The Binti Trilogy

Nnedi Okorafor’s award-winning Africanfuturist sci-fi novella series.

Science fiction and futurism are not exclusive to any one culture, and often we find ourselves - in the white western world, at least - reading all our SFF from the same cultural sources. However, we are enriched both as readers and writers when we diversify the types of stories we read in our beloved genre. It makes us more understanding, gives us greater empathy, and broadens our scope for ideas. There are wonderful stories out there from people writing from a variety of cultural backgrounds, and early on in my renewed reading journey, I decided I didn’t want to just read sci-fi stories by mid-20th century white, western men. I felt that would be a disservice to the genre and not only limit my enjoyment, but stifle my creativity. Did I need to type all that? Not at all; I don’t have to justify why I’m reading what I’m reading to anyone, but the point stands that unfortunately we as readers end up acquiring books from authors of one demographic while others slip by the wayside, and this is often completely unconscious. So, consider this an encouragement to actively seek out books by women, POC and queer authors; people outside of your cultural net, outside of your demographic: to listen and learn. I heard about Binti by Nnedi Okorafor a while ago and it immediately caught my attention. I thought I’d go for the collected trilogy because there’s an extra novella included in between the first two, and that’s really neat (I guess that makes it a quadrilogy, really). The novellas collected here are Binti, Binti: Home, Binti: Sacred Fire, and Binti: The Night Masquerade.

Blurb

In her Hugo- and Nebula-winning novella, Nnedi Okorafor introduced us to Binti, a young Himba girl with the chance of a lifetime: to attend the prestigious Oomza University. Despite her family's concerns, Binti's talent for mathematics and her aptitude with astrolabes make her a prime candidate to undertake this interstellar journey.

But everything changes when the jellyfish-like Meduse attack Binti's spaceship, leaving her the only survivor. Now, Binti must fend for herself, alone on a ship full of the beings who murdered her crew, with five days until she reaches her destination.

There is more to the history of the Meduse--and their war with the Khoush--than first meets the eye. If Binti is to survive this voyage and save the inhabitants of the unsuspecting planet that houses Oomza Uni, it will take all of her knowledge and talents to broker the peace.

But even if Binti achieves this remarkable feat, it's not the end of her story. For this lone Himba woman, now bonded with a Meduse and forever changed by this bond, still must find a way to survive and thrive at Oomza University amid swirling interspecies biases. And eventually, she must return home to test the strength of the fragile peace she worked so hard to win.

Review

I can honestly say I had no preconceived expectations for this series going in, in fact I deliberately tried to keep away from looking into it too much, and I really enjoyed all the stories here, they are honestly fantastic. The level of depth about the character work is unmatched. Binti as a character is in constant tension between her culture, traditions and heritage, and her desire to do what she feels she was born to do. Everything she does and thinks and says is filtered through the lens of the deeply ingrained tradition of her people. She goes through multiple crises of identity and deals with massive culture shock, as well as horrendous mental and physical trauma, which is all handled brilliantly and sensitively. The way she deals with the culture shock in particular (she’s the first of the Himba to go off-world) provides a great vehicle for delivering her backstory fluidly, as she relates to her new experiences as best she can using her memories of home. The technique is inspirational. The other characters presented are perhaps less fleshed out. We get to know a good deal about Binti’s father, and we get to know Okwu - Binti’s Meduse friend - very well indeed. Everyone else much less so. I found Okwu to be the most interesting character aside from Binti herself.

The overarching plot was very engaging, and through it I learned a lot about a culture I knew absolutely nothing about. I do like to read around these kinds of things, so I was looking stuff up about the Himba people of Namibia and their traditions while I was reading, and it was fascinating. The pacing of the stories was good, though I will say there is a lot of introspection from Binti, which wasn’t a problem for me, but it did slow the pacing down in some places. Here’s a failing of mine: I kept thinking of the stories as YA, and though they might fit into that category most of the time, the stories do not hold back when violence happens and for some reason it came as a surprise every time. I can’t really elaborate any further on that, it was just something I experienced while reading. I have no problems with graphic depictions of violence in books (my own books can also get pretty gruesome), but for some reason in this context I found it odd. I don’t know why.

Actually, I can elaborate a little: I get the feeling it was done purposefully. Due to the events of the first novella, Binti experiences and struggles with PTSD, and the violence, while used sparingly, is written as shocking and traumatic. It carries weight that immerses the reader more in Binti’s experience of it.

All in all, Binti was really great, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves sci-fi, not just to broaden their reading horizons, but also because it’s damn good.

There’s one more thing I’d like to mention, and it’s a little tangential: Binti’s character reminded me very strongly of Gaal Dornick from the Apple TV+ adaptation of Foundation. At least, I get the feeling that the writers on the show had read one or more of these books, because the way they wrote Gaal is very similar to Binti herself.

Binti has this innate mathematical prowess which gets her into the prestigious Oomza University, much to the chagrin of her family and the leaders of her village; she comes from a highly traditional and fairly isolationist culture; and in order to center herself she enters into a mathematical meditation called “treeing” where she dwells on complex formulas and equations. Gaal Dornick, on the other hand, has an innate mathematical prowess that gets her into Seldon’s university on Trantor, much to the chagrin of her parents and the leaders of her society; she’s from a traditional, isolationist culture; and she centers herself by entering into a mathematical meditation where she counts prime numbers.

I will remind you that none of this characterisation for Gaal is present in Asimov’s book, and in the TV show it’s one of the most interesting aspects of her character.

I would have preferred it if they had just adapted Binti instead.