Second paragraph of third chapter:

When the officer handed me my astrolabe, I resisted the urge to snatch it back. He was an old Khoush man, so old that he was privileged to wear the blackest turban and face veil. His shaky hands were so gnarled and arthritic that he nearly dropped my astrolabe. He was bent like a dying palm tree and when he’d said, “You have never traveled; I must do a full scan. Remain where you are,” his voice was drier than the red desert outside my city. But he read my astrolabe as fast as my father, which both impressed and scared me. He’d coaxed it open by whispering a few choice equations and his suddenly steady hands worked the dials as if they were his own.

I first read Binti on a transatlantic flight while reading up on Hugo-eligible short fiction for 2016. I wasn’t hugely impressed and have never really understood the general enthusiasm for it. When it made the shortlist for the BSFA Award, I wrote:

Some people have been raving about this, but I don’t really see why. The plot (plucky kid survives alien attack, makes peace between aliens and humans) is hardly original, and the fact that the protagonist’s tribal adornments uniquely give her protection against the aliens is pretty cliched. Yes, well written; yes, interesting characters; no, not a masterpiece.

By the time Hugo voting came around, it has already won the Nebula, and I wrote:

I expect that this will win, and indeed it has already won the Nebula. As I said when I read it for the BSFA vote, the plot (plucky kid survives alien attack, makes peace between aliens and humans) is hardly original, and the fact that the protagonist’s tribal adornments uniquely give her protection against the aliens is pretty cliched. But obviously it appealed to a lot of readers.

I re-read it again for this post, and did not like it any better. I would add that the writing style of the first few chapters is rather clunky, and the protagonist forgives the aliens rather rapidly for massacring most of her friends. None of the ideas are original or especially well executed. Obviously a critical mass disagrees with me, but there you go.

When the Hugo results came out, Binti had been only second at the nominations stage, but won a convincing victory on the final ballot.

I see that both Witches of Lychford and “The New Mother” were on the long list; I liked both much more. Emily Tesh keeps telling us to go back and read “Sorcerer of the Wildeeps”, and maybe I will.

You can get the complete Binti trilogy here.

Next in my sequence of joint Hugo and Nebula winners are the two from my own first year as Hugo administrator, “Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El-Mohtar and Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire.