Review: Binti

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the first book I've purchased from a real bookstore in quite some time (and I managed to find it in one of my favorite bookstores, called Hole in the Wall Books in Falls Church, VA - which seems to specialize in sci-fi, fantasy, and comics). I've been itching to get my hands on it since it was announced, because I've been following Okorafor's work closely since I read "Who Fears Death?" earlier this year. It's a novella, so it's fairly short and the physical book was slight, but totally worth it. It was released through Tor.com, which publishes many short stories on their website, and has recently started publishing longer short fiction as ebooks and physical books. Tor and Tor.com have a great track record for solid SF/F, and do some of the best work, in my opinion.

Anyway, onto the story. The world feels near-future in some ways - the physicality of Earth is very similar, as are tensions between different groups of humans, and there's a general sense of used-ness to the world - but drastically different in others. Humans have made contact with aliens; there is technology whose uses have been long ago forgotten but seem to be far beyond understanding for anyone alive now; while inter-species tensions exist, the various human factions are not quite the same. Binti is one of the Himba people. Water is scarce where they live, so they bathe and coat themselves in otjize, a special mixture of clay. Binti is the first Himba to be accepted to Oomza Uni, a university for all species in a distant solar system. Her gift for mathematics is important for the family business (making astrolabes - beautiful detail of technology that seem to function as a kind of personalized catch-all tech device, phone and computer and medical analyzer all at once, that only responds to the person it's tuned to) but Binti knows she can do more, so she leaves. (SPOILERS FOLLOW.) On the ship out of the solar system, she begins to make friends - until the ship is attacked by aliens who kill everyone on the ship but Binti, who appears to be saved by her good-luck charm, one of those pieces of forgotten tech. The aliens intend to hijack the ship and ride it to the University, where a stolen body part of their leader is on display. Binti, with the help of her device, negotiates with the aliens and offers to speak peacefully with the University for the return of the body part, realizing that it is essentially a suicide mission for the aliens. It's nice to read a story that could have gone the fighting, violent route but instead resolves peacefully and logically. She also discovers that the clay she wears has healing properties for the aliens and trades some of it for her safety and to create a stronger relationship with them. When they get to Oomza University, she successfully negotiates with the leadership. We get to see a bit of her first days at the University, as well, where she reconciles her alien-ness on the world, her distance from her homeland, and the personal importance of the traditions that variously mark her as outcast and important.

I am absolutely astounded by the level of detail in the world-building. In several of Okorafor's previous works, there are certain elements that have always intrigued me - the lost technology, the sense that some great disaster happened long ago - and Binti takes those elements and bring them into the foreground so they shine on their own. (I suspect that Binti takes place in the same world as Who Fears Death? and Book of Phoenix, but perhaps at a different time.) The world feels lived-in, and every piece of tech or culture or alien species has been fully thought out and you can see subtle (or not-so-subtle) effects of the implications of those details throughout the story. For a short story, it's absolutely gorgeous in its complexity.

The length was good for the story told, but I feel that this could have been full novel - and I want it to be a series in the "fantastical university" tradition, where we follow Binti through her adventures as she learns about the world she's thrust into. The story glosses over the elements that belong to that story (with some very good reasons - (SPOILER) the introductions to other students are brief, but that's because they all die right away, and her arrival at the University is the end of the story), and it feels like perhaps a previous or future incarnation of Binti's story could follow that path.

I appreciated the nuance of Binti's character development and the tension she feels between the importance of her culture and the sense that her culture might hamper her integration into the world she wants to join. The thought of foregoing the clay she wears only happens once (that I recall) toward the end of the story, after she has learned that what marks her as different is useful and she has already been officially accepted as part of the community, when she worries that she will still face personal discrimination. There's a beautiful scene where she washes it off in the shower for one of the first times in her life - the last of the clay she brought with her, the last of her homeland - and re-applies with new otjize she made from clay on the Oomza Uni planet. It's smart symbolism for staying connected to home while accepting a new world, and a wonderfully written scene.

Overall, definitely one of the best stories I've read in a while, and worth the $5 (or $3 for the ebook).

View all my reviews