Binti (Binti #1), by Nnedi Okorafor

I liked Binti, even it is a short story. It is my first contact with the Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor and I loved how African ideas blended with science fiction concepts in Binti. I will probably read the others in the trilogy, sooner or later.

The story is about a girl that leaves her tribe and planet to go to a university she was just admitted to. Just when getting there, an alien race of Medusae kills everybody except her. You will have to read why that happens and how she becomes the ambassador of the aliens, because the story is short enough to get spoiled by a detailed review. The writing is not without flaws and the character is dangerously close to the one in Who Fears Death, but I felt that it made a lot more sense in the context of an interstellar Federation as in Binti.

Read it. It was fun.