Tag Archives: african futurism

Review of Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor

I borrowed an audio copy of Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor, from my local library.

Description from Goodreads:
Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.

Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti’s stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach.

If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself – but first she has to make it there, alive.

Review:
Really wonderful. I enjoyed this a lot. I liked the way the author created so much of a world (universe) with so little. I loved Binti and the slow(ish) trust that develops between her and her enemy. But I was a tad bothered that despite her skill as a harmonizer, her success ultimately depended on chance, on something she randomly found years earlier. And I thought the ending came about far too easily. But mostly I adored this.

Robin Miles did a wonderful job with the narration too. She had a whistle on her hard S that was painful in headphones, but that was my ONLY complaint.

Book Review of Three Parts Dead (Craft Sequence #1), by Max Gladstone

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I bought a copy of Three Parts Dead, by Max Gladstone.

Description from Goodreads:
A god has died, and it’s up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart.

Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis’s steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot.

Tara’s job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who’s having an understandable crisis of faith.

When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb’s courts–and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb’s slim hope of survival.

Review:
I enjoyed this, but didn’t love it. I adored Tara and Abelard. I thought quite a few of the quips were funny and the whole idea of wizard lawyers was interesting. I even liked a lot of the writing. But those parts of the writing I didn’t like almost ruined the book for me. Too often the prose becomes abstract and purple in an attempt to describe something happening on a magical plain or in some’s head or just magically in general and some of it is almost indecipherable. Similarly, things seemed to happen at breakneck speed with very little explanation, especially at the beginning.

All in all, this was a middle of the road read. But it was enough to tempt me to read more of Gladstone’s work.