This book is the sequel of Binti, which I read and reviewed last year. We follow Binti after what happened in the first book.

I really liked how the characters developed in this one. Being a novella can really complicate character development, and that has been the case for a lot of novellas that I’ve read over the years but, luckily, it was not the case for this one.

The story didn’t have a big climax, like the first, but it still kept my attention and curiosity to read the next book in the series.

This has really become one of my favorite sci-fi series. I love Binti and I can’t wait to see what she’ll do next.

The end to an amazing trilogy. I love everything about this series The ending was satisfying and the characters and situations stunningly good

I really enjoyed this book. While it took me a few pages to get back into the world of Binti after having waited so long since reading book 1, the author made that easy with having a great portion of the beginning deal with Binti's connection to Okwu as well as her remembering what happened on the way to Oomza Uni.
This story is full of moments of anxiety and coping as Binti continues her journey, as well as trying to figure out how and where you fit into the society you've come to know when what you dream of butts heads against what is acceptable and expected of a person. The road Binti: Home takes is one that makes you question Binti's place in her world, but also look deeper into your place in your own and how those you are in relationship view you along with how you view others as well. And who do those views benefit. I thoroughly enjoyed this part of Binti's story and look forward to book three.

I was pleasantly surprised this second installment in the Binti series. Upon reading the first book, I felt as if the Nnedi Okorafor started her story in the middle and that the ending was rushed, but with this book, the story was rounded out and the questions I initially had about the world in which Binti lives were answered.

This book seems to represent the idea of the immigrant's struggle to exist between worlds once they have left home and then return. For the character of Binti, the drastic changes she went through in book one are highlighted by Okorafor as something that makes Binti different in a negative way amongst her tribe and a hero to a small set of other characters. Yet, Binti is unsure of who she is to herself. This uncomfortablity with being "different" are what really drives this second book and helps propel the action of the book.

Writing wise, I believe that this is Okorafor's best book yet. I've read Binti and Lagoon and found both books to be decent books, but on their own neither were special in terms of the writing or due to the plot. With Binti: Home, I was pulled in instantly. I wanted more and am glad I waited until the third book in the series came in because I want more right now.

Based on this book, I'd definitely read more of Okorafor's writing and would highly recommend the Binti series with the caveat that, "it gets better if you keep reading." Likewise, the book doesn't take long to read and you could even read book one and two in the series in one sitting if you're feeling up to it since the books collectively are about the length of the average book (approx. 272 pages).

Lush and evocative, this novella is the second in a series following the heroine Binti. Binti returns home to face her family after the events of the first story and learns more about her history. Learning her history might help her make sense of her future and the astrolab, but it might also uncover even more questions.

The sequel to HOME nails it again. This time we follow Binti home, and she's got Okwu with her. These novellas are about relationships, and the one between Binti and Okwu, is nuanced and wonderful. I loved this.

When I read Binti, I wasn’t aware that it was the first part of a series of three novellas, and when I read Binti: Home I wasn’t aware that there was still one more novella to come. I’m going to state right at the beginning that I hate cliffhanger endings. Once again this is about acceptance as Binti returns home to Namibia of the future with her Meduse friend, Okwu, the first of his people to come to Earth in peace. Binti is now an oddity. Her family never wanted her to leave, now they aren’t sure about her return. It may be the old story of ‘you can never go back’. Something bothers me about the plotting of this. Binti still suffers from PTSD after the attack in which Okwu and his people killed everyone on the spaceship she was travelling on (except her) but despite this her only friend is Okwu one of the Meduse mass-murderers. Then because she is homesick she travels back to Earth and takes Okwu with her, despite the fact that the neighbouring people in Namibia regard all Meduse as the enemy. Okwu seems to have no status or protection or even a real reason for being there. He’s an odd choice of travelling companion.

Nnedi Okorafor is an author I've been meaning to read for a long time. I used the excuse of my Black History month reading goals to pick up a few of her books, so I ended up reading the novella Binti and its sequel, Binti: Home very close together.

Binti got a lot of glowing reviews when it first came out, and I can absolutely understand why. Binti herself is such a lovable character--brave, smart, headstrong, and loyal. She's been accepted to the best university in the known galaxy, Oomza Uni. She's not the first human to go, but most people who travel are Khoush, while Binti is Himba. She's the first member of her community to travel off planet, and she pretty much has to sneak away.

On the ship to the university, though, the ship is attacked by the Meduse, a race with a feud against the Khoush. Binti survives, but she has to use every resource she has to stay alive and prevent a war.

The great parts of this book were the details about Binti and the people she meets. Her connection to her people, the clay she wears on her skin, the mathematical skills she has--these details are lovely. I got confused, though, when the ship was attacked and the plot started hinging on a random object she had in her pocket--a trinket she found in the desert years ago and carried for good luck, but that also turned out to have magic? technological? properties that saved her life. I don't know if it counts as deus ex machina if it happens in the beginning of the story instead of the end, but it threw me off my stride, and it left me stumbling for the rest of the story.

In the second book, Home, Binti has been studying at Oomza University for almost a year and decides she wants to visit home, along with a new friend. This is a fraught decision, because her family does not approve of her leaving, and her friend is from a race that has been at war with humans (Khoush, not Himba, but isn't a human a human?) for ages.

Again, I started off confused, because Binti was being hit by waves of anger that seem to come from nowhere, and also maybe an empathic connection that lets her know what her friend is feeling when it's far away. This part seemed very disjointed and unconnected from the narrative; I wasn't quite sure what it meant, either what it was describing or what that implied.

Anyway, though, the next part of the story is really lovely and powerful as Binti undertakes the second space journey of her life. Since the first one ended in terrible violence that has haunted her, the middle part of this story is a powerful recounting of facing trauma. I especially loved that it didn't have any easy answers; sometimes things are hard and sometimes they're easier, and she takes care of herself and feels a little better and maybe will continue to get better. It's a very realistic sense of fallout from the previous story and I admire that a great deal.

Then at home, there are some really lovely family relationships to explore. Again, the strength here is that nothing is black and white--her family loves her and is angry that she left. Binti wants to belong and doesn't quite anymore. By leaving, she has become something different, something that their society doesn't have a place for, and it's not a simple thing to deal with that. The nuances of how the different characters handle this and react to the changes in Binti--everything from her new friend to the different clothes she wears--are well-observed and generous, even to those who behave the worst.

There are further plot developments that seem to come out of nowhere--people and legends who come up in the middle of the book and turn out to have been a part of her history all along--that I found a bit confusing from a narrative perspective. But I think that this is a different style of storytelling, with less of a through arc and more of an emotional arc. I'm still wrestling with how to read it right.

There is so much to love here--the representation, the cultures, and the diversity that Okorafor brings to her universe. And the depictions of complicated family bonds, and how it's not always possible for everyone to get what they want, is something I've always wished someone would depict in this way. I'm not sure I've found my footing on these books, but I can tell you that when the next one comes out (because warning: cliffhanger!), I will be picking it up instantly.

I loved Binti - she is one of the most unique, wonderful characters I've read about in a long time. Tentacle hair! Traditional tribal culture and clothing! Maths!!

The first book was more of a disaster on a spaceship deal, whereas this book focuses more on the progress Binti has made in her time on the university planet. I really enjoyed seeing how she had matured and changed since the first book - and the effect this had on her return to her family and home planet. It's a very contemporary book, despite its futuristic space opera setting, and explores culture and race in a way that rivals books specifically about those topics. An excellent example of how the best science fiction is merely a backdrop from which to reflect our world back at us.

I am officially a huge fan of Nnedi Okorafor, forever and a day.

The latest offering in the Binti series from Nnedi Okorafor doesn’t disappoint.

After a year at Oomza University, Binti is ready to return home to visit her family. This comes with its own challenges as Okwu, her Meduse friend, decides to accompany her, becoming the first Meduse to visit Earth in peace after generations of conflict.
Coming back to this world reminded me of how much I love it. I particularly enjoy Okorafor’s wonderful world building and the way she fuses the traditional and the fantastic to make an amazing backdrop to the story.

During the journey home, we learn of the trauma Binti has been suffering after what happened on her voyage to the university. Even just the presence of Okwu can be distressing for her.

Even once she reaches home, Binti’s journey is difficult for her. She is not the same person as the one who left her close knit family. Not only mustthey get to know the new person she has become, but Binti must also reacclimatise to life in her village and others expectations of her, which are very different to what she has become used to at university.

Binti’s journey not only allows her to remember who she was before she left home, and helps her come to terms with where she she has ended up, but it also takes her on an eye-opening journey into her family’s heritage which she wasn’t anticipating.

I’m very much looking forward to the third Binti instalment due September 2017.

This sequel to "Binti" directly addresses the issues I had with the first story (in my review, here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1678756038). (Yeah, maybe being buddies with an inscrutable alien terrorist and bringing him home to meet the fam isn't the 100% BEST idea ever.) However, the first story was a more complete-feeling, self-contained piece of writing. "Home" is more of a "what happened next" piece.

After a semester at Oomza University, Binti gets antsy/homesick, and returns home for a visit. However, the 'welcome' she gets from her extended family and her old friends isn't all that she hoped. As a matter of fact, everything's worse than it was to start with, as people feel betrayed and resentful of her.

But then, Binti is called out to the desert, where revelations are in store... And, I have to admit, I had more issues with this part of the story. It's "TOO MUCH SPECIAL." Binti is already doubly special, with her math talents and her now-part-alien DNA. But now we're adding in another layer of special, and that layer also requires some awkward-feeling retrofitting of the initial scenario, which there were no clues to in the first story at all. I felt like it was decided on after the fact.

However, Binti and her adventures are still charming and entertaining. There will undoubtedly be more escapades, and I'd be willing to read them.

Many thanks to Tor and NetGalley for the opportunity to read. As always, my opinions are solely my own.

Nnedi Okorafor's writing absolutely shoes in her followup to her award-winning novella Binti. As the title suggests, main character Binti returns to her home and family in search of comfort and familiarity only to find out she might not fit in quite the same way. In Binti: Home, Okorafor masterfully fills her world full of promise and possibility.

There are two literary traditions that revolve around the thought and place we call “home”. One is the Thomas Wolfe version. That’s the “you can’t go home again” version of home. The other is the Robert Frost version, the one that says that “home is the place that, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

After the events of last year’s award-winning Binti, and a year at the intergalactic Oomza Uni, Binti desperately needs home to be the Frost version. She feels that there is something wrong with her, and that she needs the healing that only her home place can provide.

But when she gets there, she discovers that it is the Wolfe version of home. She ran away, not because anything terrible happened or would happen, but because the safe, secure and traditional plans that her family and her village all had for her future were too confining for her intellect and her spirit.

She stood on the shoulders of her village and saw further than anyone had in a long time. And, the people she thought were her own wanted to chop her off at the knees for it.

No one is right and no one is wrong. Binti is just a bit different from everyone she thought she knew, and everyone who believed that she was theirs. And much too much has happened for her to go back and become the smaller person that they all wanted her to be.

But just as Binti’s own Himba village people are looked down upon by the cosmopolitan, city-dwelling Khoosh, Binti herself has absorbed the prejudices of her own Himba people towards the elusive Desert People. Binti’s self-perception, even her very identity, are threatened when she learns that the Desert People are much, much more than the savage wanderers they appear to be.

And that she is one of them.

Escape Rating B-: I found the first story in this series, Binti, to be utterly absorbing from the opening paragraphs. But Home was much less so. Just as Binti seems suddenly unsettled at Oomza Uni as this story opens, as a reader I also felt unsettled. Binti found her involvement with her environment problematic, and I found my involvement with her equally so.

Binti couldn’t focus and neither could I. This was a story where I finally finished on the third attempt. I’m glad that I did, but this just didn’t grab me the way that the original did.

Home is also a middle book. While the overarching story moves forward in Home, it does not end. Or it ends on a cliffhanger. But the ending felt unsatisfying. I was hoping for some kind of conclusion, even if an interim one. Binti, in spite of its relatively short length, told a complete story, beginning, middle AND end. Home feels like all middle. And muddle.

I hope that the next book in this series, The Night Masquerade, brings Binti’s story to an exciting and satisfying conclusion.

This is a fantastic followup to Binti, adding to some of the powerful themes of the first book. I'm as fascinated with the title character as much as I am with the world around her. Definitely read the first book before starting this one, but, well, you won't be sorry you did.

Después de arrasar en los premios del año pasado, Nnedi Okorafor vuelve a la carga con la historia de Binti.

En esta segunda entrega veremos como Binti vuelve a su hogar ancestral, como una mujer muy cambiada y no solo en el aspecto físico. La recepción en su familia da lugar a sentimientos encontrados. Ella ya no es la misma y es posible que los demás no estén dispuestos a aceptarla. "No se puede cruzar el mismo río dos veces".

Okorafor sigue explorando sus temas habituales, la lucha entre la tradición y la modernidad y la inevitable presencia de prejuicios ante cualquier cambio. En esta ocasión lo hace quizás de un modo más sutil, mostrando las propias restricciones de un pueblo ya de por sí oprimido ante otro aún más vilipendiado. Me gusta cómo se expresa esta "transitividad" del desprecio.

En el aspecto propio de la ciencia ficción, utiliza ideas que ya hemos visto con anterioridad (simbiosis entre especies, modificaciones hereditarias de ADN...) que le sirven como vehículo para expresar sus ideas. Algunos de los elementos que estaban sin explicación en la primera historia reciben aquí respuesta, pero son muchas más las dudas que plantea que las que resuelve.

También resulta interesante la forma de lidiar con el duelo y el trauma que Binti arrastra desde el primer libro. No sé si las técnicas de relajación que utiliza serían realmente efectivas, pero demuestra ser una mujer valiente al enfrentarse a sus traumas en vez de esquivarlos.

Mi problema con esta lectura, ha sido una sensación de historia incompleta, sobre todo gracias al final totalmente precipitado que exige una continuación. ¿Tanto trabajo costaba contar una historia más o menos completa?

This was a very, very slow start. It took me until I was nearing the 100 page mark before I was really hooked. This could be a "it's not you, it's me" situation - the first one was amazing from the very first chapter, and I guess I just expected the same thing here. I finally got into it, I was addicted... and then it ends way before I was ready. There dang well better be a third one!

I really appreciate how well the author keeps expanding what we know of Binti's world without overloading us with too much information. Every new thing I learn, she makes me desperate for more. This series is brilliant, and even with the slow start, I am eager for another volume.

This was painstakingly average. I wanted to absolutely love this book, but unfortunately I just barely finished it. I was bored, and not impressed and I wish it had the same thrill that book 1 had.
Would still recommend, but not with the save fervor that I would recommend the first one.

While very clever and inventive, Binit: Home verged on confusing.

Binti is a young woman caught between two, and then three, worlds and cultures. While away at school, she is the only Himba; back at home with her family, she is known as the girl who left. Her only true remaining friend is Okwu, and enigmatic alien being, and her family is unable to understand her and the changes that have happened to her mind and body.

The storyline of Binti trying to come to terms with her identity and place in the universe was well written and meaningful. However, the often complex world building seems to detract from the story at times, making the plot difficult to follow.

I still eagerly await the next Binti installment.

Still recommended; be sure to read carefully and without distraction.

This story of homecoming is the sequel novella to Nnedi Okorafor's Binti. Fantastic, diverse worldbuilding, fast-paced plotting, and characters you are desperate to root for. Highly recommended.

Can you ever go home again? Binti returns to her home planet and is faced with navigating a complex political landscape with the Meduse, Okwu, as well as her own transformation. Family expectations have her preparing for a pilgrimage, but the people in the desert may have their own plans (or it is her destiny.) As always I very much enjoy the unique ways Okorafor blends various African folklores and mythologies with magic, outer space, aliens, and this time, with math! to create a vibrant and imaginative landscape. The pregnant ship was so interesting! The ending felt rushed and I wish all of Binti was a longer story. There are so many rich and unique elements, that I wanted to spend more time with more instances of them.