This was a cute and charming story about a Himba girl, first of her tribe to be accepted to a distant university due to her mathematical brilliance. She sneaks away from her family (who do not believe she should go) and travels to the university via space ship ... but the ship is attacked by the Meduse, a race of aliens who have been at war with humans (some humans? the university? It's a bit unclear who or why).

I enjoyed the unusual worldbuilding and the character of Binti very much, and would be interested to read more. However, there were elements that just seemed to make no sense at all. In particular, why on earth would the Meduse - whose technology seems to far surpass humanity's, and who can literally change the genetic structure of Binti with apparently no effort at all - why do they magically seem to be healed by the mixture of clay and perfumed oil that Binti's people cover their bodies with? Why? This makes no sense at all, there can't be anything in clay and oil that they couldn't easily analyze and duplicate through science, unless it's some weird magic thing, which makes this not a science fiction story at all but pure fantasy, and that's not the way it's being presented. Also how is everyone at the university totally okay that they murder every student (every COMPLETELY INNOCENT student) on the entire ship except Binti, and all the university has to say is "oh, sorry we took your thing, come take it back and oh why don't you stay as an exchange student?) Like, that is not how people work. There could have been a lot more interesting reaction and politics or negotiation here, but instead it felt completely deus ex machina.

I'm still interested to read the sequels, because I really did like the worldbuilding and Bindi herself, but the utter lack of coherent logic was pretty annoying.