Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Title: Binti (Binti #1)

Author: Nnedi Okorafor

Publisher: Tordotcom 2015

Genre: Scifi

Pages: 96

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Speccy Fiction - Speculative Novella

Where I Got It: Library

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.

Our book club selection for January and it was a novella. I was glad for the shorter length after a frantic holiday season. We are dumped into a very strange world based partly on our own history and partly on imagination. It took me a few pages to get my bearings, but once there, I really enjoyed this short story about a woman discovering herself and the world outside her planet. I loved watching Binti transform in just a short amount of pages. She truly feels like a new character but also the same by the end. I am interested in seeing where this series goes. I may just pick up the other two books soon.

Binti

• #1 Binti

• #1.5 Sacred Fire

• #2 Home

• #3 The Night Masquerade

Next up on the TBR pile:

All These Worlds by Dennis E. Taylor

Title: All These Worlds (Bobiverse #3)

Author: Dennis E. Taylor

Publisher: Worldbuilder Press 2017

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 336

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Speccy Fiction - Scifi with Spaceship or Space Station Setting; Cover Lover - X, Y, or Z in author’s name

Where I Got It: Our server

Being a sentient spaceship really should be more fun. But after spreading out through space for almost a century, Bob and his clones just can't stay out of trouble.

They've created enough colonies so humanity shouldn't go extinct. But political squabbles have a bad habit of dying hard, and the Brazilian probes are still trying to take out the competition. And the Bobs have picked a fight with an older, more powerful species with a large appetite and a short temper.

Still stinging from getting their collective butts kicked in their first encounter with the Others, the Bobs now face the prospect of a decisive final battle to defend Earth and its colonies. But the Bobs are less disciplined than a herd of cats, and some of the younger copies are more concerned with their own local problems than defeating the Others.

Yet salvation may come from an unlikely source. A couple of eighth-generation Bobs have found something out in deep space. All it will take to save the Earth and perhaps all of humanity is for them to get it to Sol - unless the Others arrive first.

And with this book, we come to the end of one arc in this series. I was definitely wanting to know what would happen with the Others, the Deltans, the last Earthlings, and every other random storyline. This book wraps many of those stories up with plausible endings. There’s no big deus ex machina here, just realistic space battles and human (Deltan, etc) failures and triumphs. I don’t think I love this series quite as much as J, but they are good fast-paced space centered scifi. The audio is well done and I can read one of these in a weekend while cleaning, organizing, or crafting. I will probably keep going after a short ear break.

Bobiverse

• #1 We are Legion (We are Bob)

• #2 For We are Many

• #3 All These Worlds

• #4 Heaven’s River

• #5 Not Till We are Lost

Next up on the TBR pile: