#Nnedi Okorafor

[neil-gaiman]

I'm in Santa Fe so of course I went down to the picket line outside a local studio. George RR Martin was there too, and I got to see Paris, George's better half, as well. So was incredible author Nnedi Okorafor who had driven in from Arizona to be on the picket line.

[vardir1sebebi]

"Kitapları severim. Onlarla ilgili her şeye bayılıyorum. Sayfaların parmak uçlarımda bıraktığı hissi seviyorum. Taşınacak kadar hafifler ama dünyalar ve fikirlerle dolular. Parmaklarımda titreyen sayfaların sesini seviyorum. Kitaplar insanları susturur ama yine de çok gürültülüdür."

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #53 – Binti by Nnedi Okarafor

This is one of those works that has been vaguely on my radar for years and years now – I have entirely lost track of the number of places I’ve seen it recommended as some of the best or most original science fiction of the 2010s. So when my hold finally came in on it, I went in more or less blind – which was, frankly, a fatal mistake. I bounced harder off of this than I have very nearly anything I can remember – if it was any longer I probably wouldn’t have bothered finishing the story. I got the whole trilogy as a compendium, and I’m certainly not going to force myself through the rest of it. Which is a shame, because there are plenty of original ideas in there, but (to me, at least) it’s an absolutely brutal failure of form and execution.

The story follows the eponymous Binti, a prodigy and savant in mathematics and the quasi-magical ‘harmonizing’ – creation and manipulation of electric currents. At age 16, she received accepted into the planet-spanning Oomza University and, despite the clear disapproval of her family and her people’s traditional isolationism, she runs away from home and aboard an interstellar transport to take her away. But when the ship is attacked by the Medusae – an alien species with a grudge against the university – a personal keepsake that turns out to be a powerful ancient relic allow her to survive when every other passenger is slaughtered where they stand – and eventually even communicate with the aliens who have seized the ship. She learns that they attacked as part of a plan to steal back their leader’s stinger, and convinces them to let her be their ambassador and attempt to get it through negotiation with the university administration instead. After she proves her willingness to argue on their behalf, they agree – and once they arrive at the university, the administration does as well. Both she and the young Medusae she forged something of a friendship with are welcomed as students, and she has to reckon with the dramatic changes being tested and healed by the medusae caused in her. Fin.

That is much more of a plot summary than I usually write for these things, but I guess my first big issue with the story is just that that’s basically everything that happens in the book? This feels like it could be quite easily cut down to a tight, compelling short story – or else expanded into a full novel, with enough space to give things time to breathe and allow for foreshadowing with more subtlety than a sledgehammer to the face. As is, the story feels both kind of meandering and like the plot beats are a first draft that never had the space to go back and add any real interest or surprise to them.

Which would honestly have been far more forgivable if not for the prose. This is shelved as young adult but in terms of sentence complexity and the way things are phrased it honestly feels closer to middle grade? Or, at least, every sentence was very simple and very explicit and direct, in a way that I quickly found clunky and then intensely grating to read. A friend described it as reading like it was translated from a different language, which doesn’t seem to be the case but I honestly wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Everything is also just thematically very convenient, I guess? Not even that the random relic Binti found in the sand as a child and keeps as a good luck charm turns out to be a hyper-advanced technological plot device, but that for unclear reasons the otjize dye that she (and the very real Namibian Himba ethnic group she’s a member of) use to plait and colour hair is to the Medusae a miraculous panacea which heals scars none of their own technology (capable of creating interspecies hybrids and inducing mutations with a single injection) could touch. Which is a level of thematic bluntness that’s just much more fitting for a children’s story than what I went into this expecting or hoping for.

I could go on, but there’s not really any point – to be positive, the worldbuilding hinted at is intriguing and evocative like absolutely everyone says it is. The whole reading experience was just a terrible failure of marketing, I think – I can’t recall the last time I read a book I ostensibly should have liked that is quite so forcefully Not For Me. Which is odd, because I actually quite enjoyed the other novella of Okorafor I read. But then, Remote Control was written six years later and for an adult audience.

[gollancz]

Gollancz has signed Nnedi Okorafor’s "tour-de-force", the Death of the Author. Death of the Author is an "exhilarating" story about a disabled Nigerian American woman who writes a science fiction novel that becomes a bestselling phenomenon, but her success comes at a price. Billed as a "sweeping narrative" for fans of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow,Tomorrow and Tomorrow, the story is "a multi-threaded meta drama examining the relationship between storyteller and audience". 

Okorafor said: “Death of the Author is the most ambitious and naked work I’ve ever written. I’m so proud of it. I’ve been writing it in my head for 30 years. It brings together so many of my many parts, my contradictions, fusions and my weirdness. The title comes from a famous essay by French scholar Roland Barthes, an essay that I’ve always loathed but also chewed on throughout my years working on my PhD in literature. I want readers to come away from this novel with questions, answers, and a refreshed love of what we as human beings are and what we’re capable of. Also, I wanted to tell a really good story.” 

We're so delighted to have Nnedi joining the Gollancz family with this phenomenal, layered and poetic novel. Which also has robots.

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote YES if you have finished the entire book.

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[shy-girl04]

I love the sound of the pages flicking against my fingers. Print against fingerprints. Books make people quiet, yet they are so loud.


Nnedi Okorafor

[sing-you-fools]

me: hm i wonder if Nnedi Okorafor has anything new out

my favorite bookstore's website: here are like eight books you've never heard of. because they're new. since the last time you did this. maybe two years ago or something

me: is... uh. is there such as a subscription service that i may better keep up or is this gonna happen every time

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

[thelastofthebookworms]

You'll find the other polls in my 'sf polls' tag / my pinned post.

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

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[esevik]

The next book I’ll be reading the continuation of Binti by Nnedi Okorafor titled Home.

In the first book the protagonist Binti left her home/ran away to join a prestigious university in space. However on her way there the ship got attacked by aliens and she ended up being the only survivor (kind of, the pilot survived too but he wasn’t aware of the carnage). Then some stuff happened and she ended up becoming the aliens’ spokesperson and created a truce between them and the humans. However because she became this spokesperson her DNA melded with the alien’s a bit and her hair turned into more tentacle like appendixes.

With this book titled “Home” I guess she’ll return home and deal with how her family responds to what has happened to her.

I’ll read the Swedish translation like the first book. This book also has chapters! Making my blogging a bit easier.

[nn-noor]

I love reading in the park, but I have two huge bug bites and that's why I don't go.

[thatonebirdwrites]

🥺

🥺 what’s a truly underrated book/series you recommend and wish the whole world would read? All of these books are ones that either never won awards, or are not well known -- as in if I mention them, people give me blank looks or show no recognition of the series or author.

A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers

Young Wizards Series by Diane Duane

The Circle of Magic, The Circle Opens, and Will of Empress by Tamora Pierce

Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy: Annihilation; Authority; Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer

The Species Imperative Trilogy by Julie Czerneda

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection edited by Hope Nicholson

A Psalm for the Wild Built is a novella and about a nonbinary monk who travels the countryside and serves tea to people, while listening to their troubles. Except they decide they need to go into the wilds, but during their journey, they encounter the first robot humans have seen in over two hundred years. Their friendship is adorable. It's a solarpunk world, and it's message of hope is everything. I adored it, and I wished I lived in this world honestly.

____ The Young Wizards series started in the 90s actually. I was a kid when I read the first book: So You Want To Be A Wizard. I grew up reading these books, and so I never got into Harry Potter. Mostly because when I tried Harry Potter, it felt like a poor shadow of the Young Wizards series. So I abandoned Harry Potter to continue to read Young Wizards. Honestly, I adored Nita and Kit and their fantastical adventures. @dianeduane is a master at twists and turns, and the plots of Young Wizards goes from localized problems to multi-universe problems the young wizards must rush to solve. I can't recommend it enough. Seriously, I want more people reading Young Wizards so I can talk to more folks about it. So that we can have some fanfiction for it, so that we can have more fanart. It deserves so much more attention, plus the author is super awesome and supportive for LGBTQIA folks! I'll sound the drum on this series forever. lol

____ Another series that I grew up with that I wish more people knew about is The Circle of Magic, The Circle Opens, and Will of Empress by Tamora Pierce. Sandry, Tris, Daja, and Briar were my found family, comfort characters, and their teachers were so gay (the two lesbian teachers were together actually). The themes explored were complex and fascinating. Pierce is more known for her Alanna series, which I think isn't as good as her Circle of Magic series honestly. This is my comfort series that I've read a bazillion times.

____

Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy: Annihilation; Authority; Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer is very hard to describe. I know a movie was made of the first book -- Annihilation, but the movie really doesn't capture the true weirdness of this series. Nor the rather hopeful if bizarre ending. I keep going back to re-read this series because it's prose, its worldbuilding, how the land itself becomes a character is so utterly fascinating. I want more people to read the books so I can talk to them about it!!

____ The Species Imperative Trilogy by Julie Czerneda is one of my favorite trilogies of all time. It's not well known at all, which makes me sad. Julie Czerneda is a master at crafting alien species. The story is about a salmon researcher that ends up on an investigation about an alien species that may or may not be eating entire planets of aliens -- it's a conspiracy that spans the galaxy. I couldn't put it down, and I keep going back to it because its themes are fascinating.

___

Nnedi Okorafor is more well known for her Akata Witch series (I highly recommend) or her Binti series (also highly recommend). However, her Lagoon really by far one of her best I think. It's the story of first contact with aliens, but it's also an exploration of identity, liberation, community, and how we react to change and difference. It has a very diverse cast including well-written trans characters, and I wish more folks read it (beyond scholars) so I can chat about it!

___

Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection edited by Hope Nicholson is a kickstarter I did randomly, and I'm so glad I did. I have three in this collection, and it's comics by Native American artists. They are all fantastic and I don't even know where to begin. There's just so many good stories in it, and I wish more people knew of this collection and would read it. It explores identity, intergenerational trauma, healing, liberation, and community. One of the best comic anthologies I've ever read.

____

I'll stop there. Mostly because I'm getting tired and I know the question only asked for one. But I can't choose! These are all so good, and I highly recommend them all! So thank you for asking. :)

[literary-illuminati]

Trying to finally start the Binti books and I'm not quite sure the term for the specific tense it uses for its narration but it is like nails on the chalkboard of my mind. Hoping I acclimate quickly.

[quillandqueer]

✨Interesting New Releases | 20th August

The Full Moon Coffee Shop: Translated from the Japanese bestseller, this charming and magical novel, inspired by the myth of cats returning favors to those who care for them, reminds us that it’s never too late to follow our stars.

House Of Thorns: In the vein of The Haunting of Hill House , a teen returns to the mysterious house from her past to search for her missing sister and uncover the truth of Brier Hall in this atmospheric and eerie modern gothic novel.

The Red Tunic: Coming of age as the First World War breaks out, the Mullins twins’ fates are inextricably interlinked with the turmoil of conflict in this fascinating exploration of gender roles and the extremes to which war pushes us.

Scrap: Recently dumped, artist Esther Ray wants to burn the world, but instead, she reluctantly accepts a scrapbooking job from the deliriously wealthy Naomi Duncan. Esther must include every piece of paper she’s been sent, must sign an NDA, and must only contact Naomi using the burner phone provided. Otherwise she’ll spoil the surprise. As Esther binges true-crime podcasts and works through the near-200 boxes of Duncan detritus, she finds herself infatuated with the gilded family—until, mid-project, Naomi dies suspiciously. 

She Who Knows: Part science fiction, part fantasy, and entirely infused with West African culture and spirituality, this novella offers an intimate glimpse into the life of a teenager whose coming of age will herald a new age for her world.

The Volcano Daughters: about two sisters raised in the shadow of El Salvador’s brutal dictator, El Gran Pendejo, and their flight from genocide, which takes them from Hollywood to Paris to cannery row, each followed by a chorus of furies, the ghosts of their murdered friends, who aren’t yet done telling their stories.

We Love The Nightlife: Locked in a toxic female friendship, two vampires careen toward catastrophe in this dark and dazzling page-turner, set amidst London's glittering disco scene.

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

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