Paperback, 208 pages
Published Jan. 16, 2018 by Tor.com.
The concluding part of the highly-acclaimed science fiction trilogy that began with Nnedi Okorafor's Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning BINTI.
Binti has returned to her home planet, believing that the violence of the Meduse has been left behind. Unfortunately, although her people are peaceful on the whole, the same cannot be said for the Khoush, who fan the flames of their ancient rivalry with the Meduse.
Far from her village when the conflicts start, Binti hurries home, but anger and resentment has already claimed the lives of many close to her.
Once again it is up to Binti, and her intriguing new friend Mwinyi, to intervene--though the elders of her people do not entirely trust her motives--and try to prevent a war that could wipe out her people, once and for all.
Don't miss this essential concluding volume in the Binti trilogy.
I love Binti as a character, and the way her journey in this story was physical as well as internal. The setting is complex though and I recommend reading all the novellas as quick as possible because it was jarring at first to adapt back to this world
Meh, uiteindelijk toch niet helemaal bevredigend verhaal, dit. Fantastische world building, maar iets meer plot had toch ook wel gemogen. Het ging eigenlijk gewoon drie, vier hoofdstukken te lang door.
I really like the first two if this trilogy but there were so many spots in this one where the interactions and tone just felt odd, especially in Binti's reaction to things, and the love interest really felt just stuck on. Still happy to finish the trilogy but this one fell flat where I was happy to defend the first two against critique.
My jaw dropped at one point in this book.
First, a continuation of my gripes concerning the novella trilogy format: it was annoying to read books 2 and 3 back to back. You have a conversation at the end of book 2, and then 30 something pages later (but skipping over to book three) the conversation must be rehashed into a distant memory to 'refresh' the reader about what happened in the last installment. It happened literally yesterday - there is no need for a flashback sequence here.
Now, since the story is finished I can comment on it a little more. I think that this book was like the 3rd Lord of the Rings movie, where the big battle of the 2nd film was finished off right at the start, then for the next three hours everyone went home. There was no need for any of that.
The science in this sci-fi was quite far into the fiction …
First, a continuation of my gripes concerning the novella trilogy format: it was annoying to read books 2 and 3 back to back. You have a conversation at the end of book 2, and then 30 something pages later (but skipping over to book three) the conversation must be rehashed into a distant memory to 'refresh' the reader about what happened in the last installment. It happened literally yesterday - there is no need for a flashback sequence here.
Now, since the story is finished I can comment on it a little more. I think that this book was like the 3rd Lord of the Rings movie, where the big battle of the 2nd film was finished off right at the start, then for the next three hours everyone went home. There was no need for any of that.
The science in this sci-fi was quite far into the fiction zone. Not in the sense that it was more space opera than anything else (sure, it was that too), but more-so most of the actual science was either pedestrian, miss-understood or incorrect/out of context/irrelevant. Equations like xx=fx: such a beautiful tapestry of an equation, since f is therefore equal to x where x is the set of all numbers if no additional constraints are given, simplifying to x = numbers. Wow. Or when Binti uses the 'equations for circles' which is actually a rebadged Pythagorean equation for triangles. Or when there's biology lessons like 'you are more microbes than human now'. Or when things are thrice contradicted in the same paragraph: When Binti is perceiving herself flying through space, she sees the nothingness around here, no fixed points, yet suddenly she starts falling. Then a sentence later realises it's space and that's great because there is no up or down, but then a sentence later is doing barrel rolls due to her innate understanding of down?
The writing, mostly, is repetitive and not overly imaginative. 'His hear was like a dust storm and filled with dust, like a dust storm'. Maybe mildly smirk-worthy once, but not continuously throughout.
The story: I don't know. I think I liked the first book as a stand alone, and the continuation was a flop. I could see what the author was attempting to do, but didn't quite make it there. The plot may have wended from side to side, but the outcome was uncomfortably obvious as soon as book 2 got moving. Nothing was surprising.
I wanted to read this trilogy to gleam an insight into an author not from my part of the world, not from my culture, yet we know we have a common footing in the fact we are lovers of sci-fi. Instead, I learnt that being insular and prejudice as a culture is a generally universal trait, that teenagers are the same selfish idiots all over the place & solidified a notion that I'll probably never attempt to read a novella trilogy again.
I’ll let this review stand for all three Binti books, though I enjoyed this one the most.
The Binti books are superb speculative fiction. They take place in a fully imagined and believable world with characters that are at once familiar and strange.
There are two things that I particularly love about these books beyond their wild inventiveness.
The first is that the adventures here are about making peace, where so often it is about making war.
The second is the way these books examine what happens when you encounter and get to know someone from a culture that is different than your own. Okorafor manages to capture the way a different culture slowly becomes a part of you, changing you even while you remain the same person.
These books are amazing, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to anyone willing to travel and explore beyond the familiar.
I wanted to like this series more than I did. I never really liked Binti or understood why people liked her in the books - she was so emotional and reactive and I found the constant details of her repetitive psychological coping mechanisms for her continuously overwhelming feelings tedious.
The way math was used in the story was also pretty jarring for me and just felt silly and took me out of the story every time.
Ultimately, Binti was a character things happened to rather than a character who did things and she was terrified and upset to hysteria by nearly all of it.
There were so many cool things about the world and the cultures and peoples in it, but they felt like unexplored background.
Very interesting ending to the trilogy. It felt like it had an extended epilogue since the main climax happens early on, but this was actually quite satisfying as it allowed us to see lots of threads wrap up and discover even more about the universe that Binti lives in.
It's rare to find a story that doesn't resemble anything you've ever read. Sure, there are elements of "coming of age" in the Binti trilogy, but they are covered in so many layers of exploration of identity that they don't feel familiar. And that's great. The world needs more unique tales, and Binti's journey is so much more interesting and mind-blowing than anything Joseph Campbell could have imagined with his hero's journey paradigm.
The last third of this book is absolutely mind blowing. I was furious, heartbroken, ecstatic, awed, and about a bazillion other adjectives.
This is essentially an origin story spread across 3 novellas - or one novel, if you look at it my way. And it's such a good arc from an origin story perspective. one which gets a good end in this book. Deals with chaotic beginnings, a vast universe, and a learn-as-you-go approach to universe dynamics by employing a personal lens to keep the story grounded.
Fun read.
While I would rather this trilogy had been structured as a single novel, it really was a creative force. Loved the characters and mythology and wish it could have gone deeper.
