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Such a cool premise - a teenaged girl is the first of her people from Earth to attend an intergalactic university. She basically sneaks away from home and on the way, things start to happen.

And the plot is definitely something else - lots of things happen, many of them beyond my prior imagination, alien species with peculiar properties show up, and Binti goes on a very special journey of her own. Not bad.

Unfortunately, I enjoyed reading these three novellas and one short story much less than I had hoped. Too many conflicts, even MAJOR ones, are resolved in just a few lines or paragraphs. Feuds end after a brief chat. Shocking news are believed and accepted without any proof. Plotlines finish with "deus ex machina"-style plot device- solutions pop up that were never around before to magically save the day. Bits of mythology and spirituality are info-dumped over several pages. All if this made for a very choppy reading experience, as if I was just thrown parts of a narrative that fit together, or don't. And whatever happened to "Show, don't tell"? There is a lot of telling in these stories.
This was really unsatisfactory to read - I did not feel as if I was taken seriously as a reader. Maybe longer forms would have been more pleasant in this regard; novels instead of novellas.

I also found it hard to keep track of all of Bintis new-found properties and, well, gadgets? By the end of the third story, so many concepts had been introduced to me that I was just very confused when the book ended, and I had a lot of questions left.
My personal pet peeve: Binti has a strong cultural connection to a clay-based mixture she applies to her skin and hair and it plays an important role in the plot. It is so important to her that this otjize is literally mentioned on every page... I wish this was shown in a different way that felt less repetitive.

It is possible that all of this is "a feature, not a bug" - that the confusion and the wild plot development are intended to convey a particular meaning. Regardless of whether that is the case, I did not particularly enjoy reading these stories.

I did really like Nnedi Okorafor's novel [b:Lagoon|18753656|Lagoon|Nnedi Okorafor|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1383619801l/18753656.SY75.jpg|26643213], so it is possible that I had more trouble with this format, rather than story itself.

Who doesn't love a book that takes you on a journey into a world you knew very little about, this time around the Afghanistan of the narrator's childhood, and then again adulthood? If your answer is "me, I don't care about that", then this book is not for you. I, however, enjoyed this praised novel a lot, with its physical and psychological violence, its mood set expertly by the author, and how it all comes together in a plot spanning a few decades and at least two continents.

Were some things a little too on the nose for my taste? Certainly. The sheer violence of it all may also not to be everyone's liking. I guess it all serves the purpose of the novel, to teach us a lesson in being human. (Cheesy? Yeah, actually, just like a few parts of this book.)

Overall a moving experience, recommended to everyone who wants to know more about Afghan history without suffering through the atrocities themselves.

An eery book to read: Written decades ago, it shows us a dystopian future starting in July 2024 where climate change and political turmoil have left the US, and much of the world, with civilization crumbling, similar yet different from what we know today.

Pushing politics-induced anxiety aside, I expected an exciting novel with social commentary. What I got was... a novel with social commentary.

The first half seemed like a near-endless introduction to me - of the protagonist, her family, and her community. This part was definitely too long for my taste - a lot of characters are introduced, but never brought up again. The bits of information about the outside world seem detached and irrelevant to a certain extent.

The protagonist has a supernatural ability that only comes up after a while, and is described inconsistently: Sometimes her heightened sense of empathy for others' emotions and pain overwhelms and nearly cripples her; sometimes it doesn't come up for dozens of pages although people around her are feeling, well, lots of things. This jerked me out of the immersion of the story, and left me more confused than anything.

Our protagonist also sets her mind on founding a new religion, and spends considerable time thinking/writing about it, and discussing it with others. I didn't find this aspect of the story interesting at all.

All these negative aspects aside, the plot, especially in the second half, is interesting enough: I kept reading to find out what would be next. At least some characters are likeable AND interesting. It is obvious that this novel is the first part of an unfinished trilogy -- lots of things are brought up, but not resolved (yet).

Octavia E. Butler's writing is just great - every chapter, every scene drew me right in, and I painfully felt as if I was there, in crumbling California, with the cast of characters.

Overall, the good and the bad of this book made me end up leaving a mediocre rating of three stars. I'm not sure I'll read the second book, [b:Parable of the Talents|60932|Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2)|Octavia E. Butler|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1170553715l/60932.SY75.jpg|249012]: I'm afraid the religious themes will only grow, plus there is no third part to conclude the series because Butler never wrote it.

Fungi are so fascinating - their biological properties are beyond weird ("different"), they can be found virtually anywhere, and have influenced humans and their civilizations in so many ways.
The author and I share this fascination, but unfortunately this book wasn't a hit for me.

Ironically, I didn't find enough information about fungi in it. There is a lot of stuff being described, but I found myself much less interested in the million stories around them -- and even less in the clearly hallucinogen-induced madness of some other passages.

What bugged me: Many of the properties of fungi that the author describes are incredible - but not unique. Other (micro-) organisms are able to do the same or very similar things, but are not mentioned. I think this is a misrepresentation of facts, and should have no place in a science non-fiction book like this one.

Admittedly, as a microbiologist, my expectations may have been more scientific than for other non-fiction books. Yet, despite the beautiful illustrations and interesting photos, this book didn't quite convince me. I may have to get my fungal information fix elsewhere.

What a writer Flannery O'Connor was - this collection of short stories shows it very clearly. The characters seem to come to life after a few pages, the settings are uncomfortably real, the plots somewhere between conceivable and realistic.

After a few stories, however, they started to feel like "more of the same" to me: The settings are just too similar to tell them apart meaningfully, the characters - albeit awfully real - seem to come from the same stock, the plots often seem to meander towards some gruesome death. I felt a certain hopelessness in the plots, and couldn't really connect to any of the characters well enough to carry me through the stories.

My edition contained a 60-page foreword by a friend of the author's (who edited and published her work after her death). While it was dreadfully long and very literary minded, it did help me put some things into perspective.

While my reading experience doesn't really let me give more than two stars, I am sure some others will love the stories in this collection - they are well-written after all.

Wütend hinterlässt mich dieses Buch teilweise - vor allem die erste Hälfte ist ein echter Pageturner, der mir die Trauer der Hinterbliebenen und die Wut über die oft schrecklichen Umstände von Frauen in unserer Gesellschaft sehr deutlich gemacht hat. Ich fühlte mich geradezu hingesogen in die negativen Gefühle - ein Beweis für die bemerkenswerten Fähigkeiten der Autorin.

Je weiter ich im Buch kam und je mehr ich der Handlung gefolgt bin, desto unbehaglicher wurde es mir. Das lag an der verurteilenswürdigen Misogynie der Charaktere und der Gesellschaft -- allerdings auch am Buch selbst.
Die negativen Gefühle zu Helenes Tod (von dem wir schon im Klappentext lesen) waren mir einfach zu viel. Dutzende Seiten las ich über Trauer und Wut und Hofflungslosigkeit und klägliche Versuche, das Leben weiterzuführen ohne die eigene Mutter, Freundin, Ehefrau -- das war schwer zu ertragen. Weniger Raum für diesen Aspekt wäre aus meiner Sicht besser gewesen, auch um mehr Zeit dafür zu haben, wie die Beteiligten mit der neuen Situation umgehen.
Nicht geholfen hat mir beim Lesen, dass ausnahmslos alle männlichen Charaktere in diesem Buch Frauenfeinde unterschiedlicher Ausprägung sind. Ein Roman muss nicht zu 100% die Realität abbilden (im Gegenteil!), hier wurde für meinen Geschmack allerdings zu dick aufgetragen. Das machte das Buch für mich noch schwerer erträglich und vergab aus meiner Sicht Chancen auf eine differenziertere Perspektive.
Nach einiger Zeit nahm auch die Handlung für mich völlig unglaubwürdige Wendungen und ich fand die Reaktionen der Charaktere auf schockierende Ereignisse erschütternd lasch. Das hat mich nicht überzeugt und mich sehr schnell aus der Illusion herausgeholt, am Leben der Charaktere teilzuhaben.
Eine sehr deutliche Rolle spielt im Buch auch die COVID-19-Pandemie mit ihren sozialen Auswirkungen, vor allem auf Frauen, Kinder und Jugendliche. Das ergibt zunächst Sinn; gleichzeitig wirkt das Buch dadurch auf mich unangenehm tagesaktuell. Ich frage mich, wie Leser*innen in der Zukunft mit diesem Setting umgehen werden.

Alles in allem ein lesenswerter Roman für alle mit starken Nerven. Ich hoffe, dass vor allem viele Männer zu diesem Buch greifen, um eine wichtige andere Perspektive besser zu verstehen. Ein besonderes Lesevergnügen sollten die Interessierten allerdings nicht erwarten.