landing on more or less the same rating i gave the first entry, for many of the same reasons. after a (STARTLINGLY SHORT IN TERMS OF PAGETIME, TO BE FRANK) time spent at oomza university, binti returns home and reunites with her family for the first time since her dramatic departure.

there is just, to me, a disconnect between the thematic beats okorafor seems to be trying to hit with these and the actual execution. the ins and outs of the geopolitical (cosmopolitical?) terrain just don't make sense, and feel annoyingly simplified. i almost feel like either committing to a lower-stakes smaller-scale culture clash and personal growth story OR a big-picture diplomatic relations one might've resolved some of this. that, and making this one chunky novel rather than a series of novellas.

in home okorafor actually does another round of binti encountering a culture foreign to her, but on a smaller and more personal scale, and i think it feels more genuine. not perfect - there's still just too many incredibly convenient solutions, man, and the story beats do feel a bit repetitive by that point, but i still liked it better.

the sections of home that show binti interacting with her family are great and feel emotionally genuine, in a way that binti's relationship with okwu still does not.

i'm sorry, the work to sell me on their relationship progression was just not there in binti, and i feel like this is going to continue to be a stumbling block to me unless something changes dramatically in the final installment. binti's narration references her anguish about the events of the first story and okwu's likely involvement a number of times, and we see binti suffer ptsd-type symptoms, but none of this really bears out in how she interacts with okwu.

(to be clear, i don't need it to be ONLY an angstfest or ONLY a fluffy found family fest. i think binti both feeling repulsed by/resentful of okwu and at the same time feeling that it's the closest thing she has to family at her uni and that they have a special bond she wants to maintain and finds comforting would be a completely valid and compelling storytelling choice. i think that's what we're meant to feel is happening, but i at no point felt like that's what was happening.)

the worldbuilding's still fun and the prose is very readable and at moments quite lovely. i will continue right on to the third and final (?) novella. i just feel like.... there could be More.