Celestial | Binti

Binti

Nnedi Okorafor

Save to Your Books: Bookshop

100% of affiliate revenue supports Celestial

“Prepare to fall in love with Binti.” —Neil Gaiman.

Winner of the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novella!

Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs. Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach.

If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University itself — but first she has to make it there, alive.

The Binti Series

PRAISE FOR BINTI

“ Binti is a supreme read about a sexy, edgy Afropolitan in space! It's a wondrous combination of extra-terrestrial adventure and age-old African diplomacy. Unforgettable!” —Wanuri Kahiu, award-winning Kenyan film director of Punzi and From a Whisper

Here’s some cozy sci-fi for your morose heart:

  1. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers At just 150 pages, no war, no fascism, just a nonbinary monk having a midlife crisis with a tea cart and a robot in the woods, this low stakes cozy robot book is the next book I plan to pick up.
  2. Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree Yes, but did you know that the third book in the saga, Brigands & Breadknives, is currently on Netgalley? It comes out in November!
  3. Dead Endia by Hamish Steele
    Graphic novels are just so low commitment and high impact.
  4. Space Battle Lunchtime by Natalie Riess
    Space Battle Lunchtime is an adorable read for anyone in the middle of the Sci-fi Reader/Great British Bakeoff fan Venn diagram.
  5. Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
    OK, so it's a bit high stakes because if this band doesn't win the competition, Earth gets vaporized.
  6. Finna by Nino Cipri
    Neurodivergent and queer IKEA employees get sucked into an interdimensional wormhole in search of a missing grandma.
  7. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
    In Book 1 of Binti a Black girl leaves home to go to space university with jellyfish aliens.
  8. The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa and Louise Heal Kawai (Translator)
    Hear me out: short chapters. Talking cats. Low conflict. These are murder mysteries that never actually stress you out.
  9. The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
    The plot takes place over a couple hundred years and 2 generations.
  10. Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove
    Dracula and werewolves and Frankenstein...on a spaceship. This book is such a weird and tropey mash-up that you will be laughing out loud and saying "aweeee" while reading it.

Reading is supposed to be fun and enriching, and while sometimes that means a cognitive obstacle course that requires a PhD and a trauma therapist to get through, these books are here to help you recover from that one novel.