A reread for my book club :)

I was apprehensive to start this one, having just deducted a star from the first novella. Isn’t it satisfying when books hold up on a reread?

Importantly, the book stops pretending to be sci-fi and reveals its colourful science fantasy outfit. Thank you! Binti’s trauma and PTSD are addressed and explored in ways that lessened my gripes with the first novella.

Trying to reconcile who you are and your home and culture can be hard. It’s a culture that you love, yet it imprisons you, in more ways than you know. Your family loves you and hurts you – because of fear, because or prejudice, because of “this is how things should be”. Oh, Binti. This is indeed “the pain and glory of growth”.

I loved the scene when “Desert People” appeared:

“You people are so brilliant, but your world is too small,” the old woman who was my father’s mother, my grandmother said. “One of you finally somehow grows beyond your cultural cage and you want to chop her stem. Fascinating.”

The story ends with one of those horrible cliffhangers that shouldn’t be allowed. I do have the final novella within reach, so I am fine ;) ( )

Nnedi Okorafor's wildly successful Binti helped launch Tor.com's novella-publishing imprint (which also publishes Martha Well's Murderbot series) before winning both the Hugo and Nebula awards in 2016. Binti was a shape-shifting story of adventure, trauma, transformation and communication in the guise of sci-fi thriller/horror. It followed its namesake heroine from her Himba roots on Earth to faraway Oomza University, where hundreds of different peoples from across the galaxy go to study. On the journey to Oomza Uni everyone dies expect for Binti when the ship is hijacked by hostile aliens. And that's how we meet the Meduse. The Meduse look like human-sized floating jellyfish. The Meduse have a history of war specifically with the Khoush, apparently the dominant human ethnocultural group and whose monopoly on space travel seems absolute: the Meduse appear unaware that there even are any other kinds of human until they meet Binti. However, Binti is spared because The Meduse can't touch her because of a mysterious ancient artefact she's carrying, the edan. Binti wraps up with her making it to Oomza Uni and befriending the Meduse.

In Binti: Home, Okorafor sends her heroine back to Earth on a quest to reconcile the new, conflicting parts of herself with her roots and its quite astounding.
In Binti: Home, we see Binti dealing with the aftermath of her trauma and we see that the Himba people's marginalization and oppression does not make them immune to prejudices of their own. Its a twisting of conventional genre structures, Home is is the coming of age story that I thought Binti was going to be (Binti was an intense sci-fi thriller). And its complete with an initiation sequence.

Okorafor's writing is extremely beautiful yet economical. Her writing honestly reminds me of one of the greats of sci-fi/fantasy: Ursual K Le Guin (which is high praise indeed).

Home is a novella about prejudice, family, and growing up. And its highly recommended. ( )

Very good. I felt sad finishing it though. I wanted to know where we were going to next and I didn't want to wait for the next book. ( )

Home picks up the story that Okorafor commenced in Binti and develops it further. Binti is at Oomza university studying highly advanced mathematics, but feels the tug of the home that she abandoned. She returns to a hostile reception, and then embarks on a journey where she discovers more about herself.

This second instalment is not much longer than the original novella. While it takes Binti's story in some interesting directions, the ending is not conclusive; there is a third instalment due next year. I really don't see the justification for spinning this insubstantial story out over three books. It would have been better to complete all three parts and publish as one standard-size novel. I think this mars my enjoyment of the story, and I find it impossible to give it a high rating as a result. ( )

Another good book,but I didn't enjoy it as much as the first volume of the trilogy.
The content is probably better paced than the first, but lacks some of the pizzazz that electrified the first volume. ( )