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NeilNjae
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I'm with @RichardAbbott and see the Iroquois as outsiders. We don't really see their motivations or decisions, so they're more like a force of nature in this book. As for the raiding for wives, I get the impression that they only person consenting …
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(Quote) That's true, as is the notion that the English and French would try to pit their allied First Nations against each other for the advantage of the European powers. As for the revenge culture and warfare, I was reminded of a post on the Dothra…
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(Quote) A good question. I was thinking also about how this compares to War and Peace, another book with a large scale and a host of characters. Why did I enjoy War and Peace more than The Orenda? I think it's because the characters' goals are gene…
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I'm with @RichardAbbott here in that authors have to create a host of distinct characters, regardless of the grammatical person they use to express those characters. That's one of the things that makes writing fiction hard. I don't think that chara…
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This is a good question, and I don't have good answers. I think @RichardAbbott has good things to say, and one strand of that is about "who has to right to speak for a community?" Richard says that many people have the right to speak for h…
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I think this story has to tread carefully, as it feeds into current discussions and decisions about the descendants of the people in the story. There's a responsibility to portray cultures accurately, even if some of the people and events are fictit…
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As I've said elsewhere, Bird is a clear villain. He's a murderous psychopath who destroys his entire community on the altar of his revenge. Christophe is earnestly trying to do the best by his values, even though we (modern post-colonial Westerners)…
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In the small scale, the story was far from inevitable, though it was inevitable given the characters we had. By that I mean it was a Tragedy in the dramatic sense: Bird's fixation on retribution for his wife directly led to the destruction of the We…
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I'm not sure if the narrator was the generalised spirit of the Wendat, or a descendant of the Wendat who lived through the events described and has the benefit of hindsight. Either way, I don't think the inclusion added much to the story. If anythin…
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It's difficult to judge. On the one hand, there was plenty of "magic" in the Wendat chapters. Gosling was the most prominent example of that, but there were various other prophecies and visions that had a great effect on characters. That c…
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I think all the characters were believable and convincing. I liked how the the perspective flipped from one to the other, so we got to see the thinking behind various actions, even if other characters found them perplexing. Bird was definitely the …
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I wasn't keen on it as a work of fiction. I think it read a set of serialised diaries of the viewpoint characters as they went about their lives. There was no dramatic thrust to the events. Instead, it read as a slice of life of a bunch of character…
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On a more positive note, it's worth reinforcing the message of "what should RPG gamers do to get more Black people playing?", and the answer proposed was much the same as for any other group (or person): inform people what the games are li…
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Excellent photos, thanks. They really illustrate what's in the book. The palisade is different from what I imagined. The one pictured wouldn't stop arrows, but the book suggested that people could shelter safely behind a palisades, implying it was …
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(Quote) Indeed I have. (Quote) That will be for others to chime in.
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(Quote) I've finished it. I wouldn't call it "dense", so that bodes well for an interesting discussion!
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My local weekly club went to online games in early 2020. The club set up a Discord group. Games have continued, some using Discord, some Roll20, some with some other method of communication. There has been a variety of virtual tabletops used. I've t…
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(Quote) I agree with that. If "Khoush" means "not Himba", it would have been nice to acknowledge the variety of people under the "Khoush" umbrella. If "Khoush" means "neighbour of Himba" it would hav…
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I agree, it's rapid and breathless all the way through. The only time for a bit of pause and reflection is when Binti dies at the end and people start to consider the changes that happened because of her. I think the stories could have done with a …
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(Quote) I think you've nailed it. The edan is a representation of the mysteries of the universe, and more of it is revealed only when Binti grows in her understanding. Good insight!
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(Quote) Did she? Or did she just write the Himba and Khoush exactly as they are, and that comes across as alien and strange to us blinkered Western readers? I think it's a mistake to exoticise the setting, to treat it as something novel that's shown…
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Okwu spends a lot of time being a stand-in for a whole species, so there's a question of how much his personality is his as opposed to his culture's. I agree with @Apocryphal that it develops some personality by the end of the trilogy, finding it's …
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(Quote) I think this is the real reason. The first novella took off, so Okorafor had to do a whole bunch more world building that didn't really fit with the first story. We ended up with a character with lots of disparate features tacked on, when it…
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I think the aliens were different physically, but not that different intellectually. Especially in Oomza, all the staff seemed very similar in outlook. That may have been a consequence of them all being university academics. (Quote) I don't think B…
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(Quote) I like this observation. A lot of things happen to Binti, forced on her by circumstance. She shows her character by how she rises to these challenges, becoming more than she was before while still retaining her core identity. And she uses th…
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(Quote) Okorafor has stated that Binti isn't a YA book, and seems to get a little frustrated that people categorise it as such. But saying that, it certainly reads like a YA book, with characters with simple inner lives, clearly drawn conflicts, and…
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The impression I got of the technology was one of diversity. There were many different species and cultures around, and they mostly shared their technology. I don't think the living spaceships came from Earth, but I don't know where they were from.…
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I think the world is limited to Africa (specifically southern Africa) in much the same way that much American SF assumes the world is limited to the USA. It's a statement that the world doesn't revolve around the global north. I don't think it says …
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If we want to wait a bit for other formats to become available, that's fine by me.
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I've had stong recomendations for Five Decembers by James Kestrel, so let's do that in February. I think it was published in October 21. It's a hardboiled detective story set in 1941, featuring a detective from Hawaii who goes to Hong Kong just befo…