Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Familiar and New Sci Fi

Binti: the Complete Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor

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I have a bit of a confession to make: I assigned my students a novella that I hadn’t read the conclusion of. This isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. Binti is a trilogy, and I’d read the first installment, assigned it, started the full trilogy, put it down, forgot about it, then picked it back up with about 2 weeks left in the semester. Here follows a review of the full trilogy. Reasons I picked this for an intro to lit/composition 2 type class: […]

Who fears fantasy tropes?

Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

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Take an ancient prophecy, a genocide-fueled war, a post-apocalyptic setting, a reluctant teacher, band of friends, and a powerful heroine with anger management issues and you have Who Fears Death. This was award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor’s first novel for adults after publishing a few YA novels. This novel feels more like a hybrid of the two formats. The romance and coming-of-age aspects of YA with the more mature themes of an adult novel. Okorafor threw every fantasy trope she could into this brutal novel to […]

Book Club Re-Read: Binti

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

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Original review, July 2018: Awkward writing hampers an otherwise nuanced and interesting novella Re-read review: Picked this up again for Book Club tonight. My reviews have certainly gotten longer–I read this in 2018, and had only just begun to dip my toes into reading (!) again, much less writing 500 word reviews of things I’d read. I think I still agree with my original synopsis, although perhaps not for the same reasons that I originally had while writing it. I read this book for the […]

A world-building amuse-bouche

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

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This is a delightful amuse-bouche of a book! I haven’t really read novellas before, but I really enjoyed how Nnedi Okorafor sketched a fascinating ‘working’ world (well, universe) in just a few pages. The brushstrokes created a lovely, multisensorial universe and a few interesting characters that I assume are more fleshed out in other works. Texture and smell and color and sensation were all integral to the story. Binti, the heroine, comes from an isolated desert community, and, at 16, she runs away from home […]

An intriguing but ultimately disappointing take on aliens coming to Earth

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

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This was such a cool idea! Aliens land in the ocean outside Lagos, and basically start granting wishes to sea creatures. This swordfish wants to be enormous? Done. This eel thing wants to be able to fly? Done. Then the aliens come ashore and are basically like “Yo, earthlings, we’re here, we plan to stay, there’s nothing you can do about it, hi!” No nefarious plots, no interstellar war, no kidnapping humans for experiments. The main alien ambassador chooses three humans to be her representatives, […]

The Book of the Phoenix-a great work by a new favorite author

The Book of the Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor

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I first heard of the works of Nnedi Okorafor through a friend who attended a writing workshop with her many years ago but this is the first work of hers that I have read. And I loved it but it is a complicated, dense work. The story begins in Africa. The world has been devastated by some calamity and this older man is seeking shelter to avoid an unusual storm. In a cave, he finds computers that provide him with a recording of the woman […]



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