25. Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor

I feel a bit cheap counting these Binti books separately.  They really should be read in a single volume.  I think there is a single volume version out there and I believe Okorafor wrote them separately, but the most popular version are these slim volumes that you could read in a day. 

As the title states, Binti returns home after a year at space university.  She has found her way there academically, if not socially,  after her initial struggles and triumphs.  The trip home poses greater challenges and risks.  She brings Okwu with her, the meduse (a jellyfish like race) that contributed to the massacre of everyone but Binti on the ship to Oomza University.  You learn that there had been a war between the white earthlings and the meduse and this was the first time one had come to earth in peace.  Binti is sort of a galactic celebrity because of her survival and plea for peace with the meduse, but her family is very traditional and her leaving has created a lot of resentment.  Things are complicated.

A lot goes on in this book and at the beginning the style and pacing was a bit too declaratory and fast for me, but I think that is what the young adults enjoy.  It gets much deeper as you learn more about her family and background culture and quite intense as she heads out into darker and more mysterious territory in the deserts outside her home and ends in a cliffhanger.

Looking forward to the third and final book in the series.