Binti

I heard Tor's audio version of Hugo-winning novella Binti, read by Robin Miles. She tells the story in a heavy African accent that I sometimes found difficult and had occasionally to pause and replay to understand what she had said. Binti, a young woman from Namib, is the first-person narrator of the story, the plot of which is told here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binti_(novel).

Binti tells of the sudden deaths of her new friends on the space ship traveling to Oomza Uni in such an offhand way that I wasn't sure what had happened. Was it a dream? A recollection? Did all her friends die? I had to replay.

Binti's edan is a stone she found in the desert five years earlier. She had been told it is an artifact of ancient technology. She kept it as sort of a good luck talisman. When the Meduse squid people attacked her ship and killed everyone on board, it protected her and allowed her to communicate with the Meduse. It had never done anything before, but now it came alive and performed as if by magic. Late in the book there was a reference to tribal magic.

Binti has been a Master Harmonizer since childhood. It is never really explained what a harmonizer is other than perhaps a person with exceptional mathematical talents and the ability to manipulate substances. It is a talent that assists Binti at opportune moments, kind of like a superpower.

Binti's people make astrolabes (an ancient device used for navigation before the invention of the sextant.) Binti occasionally refers to her astrolabe but never really describes its function, leaving us to infer that it is an interstellar navigation computer.

I am among those who consider science fiction and fantasy to be separate though intertwined genres. Binti, especially the part played by the magical edan, seems to have elements of magical fantasy though it clearly has the feel and flavor of science fiction.

So - having vented all my complaints about this book, I will say that I enjoyed it. It's a good story and I have requested that my library obtain the next book in the series.