The chosen one, Afrofuturism and vindictive Jellyfish : Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (Review)

A/N: This review contains mild spoilers for Binti by Nnedi Okorafor. This is your spoiler warning.

This novella made me feel like I was seven again, a child who was obsessed with animals and astronomy. This scratched an itch that I didn’t even realise existed and I’m going to rave about this for the rest of my life. 

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor is an afrofuturistic sci-fi novella following Binti, the titular character, as she embarks on an intergalactic journey to a university against the wishes of her family. Being a Himba, a tribe living near a desert of an unnamed planet known to sustain their whole lives around the red soil of their ancestral land, Binti is expected to stay put and continue the legacy of her Bitolus family who make astrolabes for a living. She’s a genius mathematician and decides to go against the grain to pursue her dreams when she becomes the first from her tribe to be shortlisted by the Oomza university, a very prestigious research institution set on a different planet.

We follow her journey as she travels with her soon to be classmates across the universe, making new friends and ignoring the racist comments until their ship gets attacked by a race called the Meduse who decide to exact revenge for something that was stolen from them. After turning out to be the only survivor in the attack, what follows is a fascinating story of perseverance and magic as Binti fights in her own way to survive.

I absolutely adored the fantastical writing and world-building for this book. The plot has a kind of guileless, fairytale-like resolve to it. Nnedi Okorafor built a world that had me obsessed from the very beginning. Spacecrafts made from the exoskeleton of giant fishes in a symbiotic way to jellyfish that communicated at a different frequency, speckled with African myth and culture was a fabulous symphony until the end. It made me crave for more and I was delighted when I found out that it was the first book in a trilogy.

I highly recommend this to people who enjoy reading about animals in a fantasy setting, especially if you’re into marine biology. I also recommend it to people who want to read a science fiction novella with a chosen one who is resilient and whose magic is mathematics. And for anyone who wants to explore feminist SFF and Afrofuturistic themes without having to dive too deep into the history and science for everything. 

A/N: I truly hope that was a convincing review because I really desperately want to talk about this beautiful book with someone who has read it. I can’t wait to read more from this author. The panel at the Nebula Awards has some spectacular taste and I truly appreciate the variety of themes and stories that I’ve been introduced to after I started this series.

Thank you for reading the sixth installment in my ‘Nebula Novella’ series where I read and review novellas which have won the Nebula Award in the past few years. The next one on my list is a horror novella that was the winner for best novella in 2024. As a lover of horror, I’m excited to share my thoughts with you.

To read the previous installment, here’s my take on All Systems Red by Martha Wells.