Binti is a really engaging, well-written book, with storytelling and worldbuilding that's solid and rich and smooth as clay, fittingly. It's a book about change and tradition, about cycles of violence and cycles of trust, and given that it's so short, I think everyone should give it a read.

The only thing that didn't sit entirely easy with me was the ease with which the protagonist seemed to overcome the story's inciting trauma. Cycles of violence and mistrust are incredibly corrosive and difficult to break in the real world, and that complex difficulty didn't really feel present or impactful here. But in the end, that just makes the story feel a bit too optimistic, which isn't the worst thing in the world.