The first Binti book left a lot of unanswered questions, and a lot of concepts raw and unexplored. Rather than bring closure to those, “Binti: Home” moves further away, by introducing more characters and concepts which are incompletely fleshed out.
Binti feels flashes of anger, and decides the best way to resolve this would be to take a break from university, mid-term, and go an a pilgrimage like Himba people do. The university is very supportive, and her Meduse friend Okwu accompanies her back home. There, the finds that not too many people are thrilled to have a Meduse in their midst, and socially no less. Understandable, since they have lost friends and family in the war with the Meduse.
Binti sees an apparition called a Night Masquerade; presently, a group of desert people, who turned out to be her father’s family, arrive to take her to see her grandmother, and teach her more about her heritage. This is when things get far murkier, something about an advanced alien species from long ago, whose DNA exist in her…
This storyline has moved far away from any professed science fiction roots, deep into the realm of fantasy. But the world building is very sparse, and no ground concepts are established. This prevents a reader from ever becoming emotionally involved in the story. It seems like the characters are taking actions and making decisions based on criteria which are sensible within the rules of that world, but the reader is unaware of those same rules.
I kept waiting for the story to converge, for some big revelation or plot twist which pulls in all the unexplained threads and ties them all together, but this book did just the opposite. It introduced newer characters, newer concepts, and newer angles to everyone’s back story. I am very hard-pressed to recommend this book series to anyone. I am even more hard-pressed to find the motivation to read the next book, the last book in the series.