Binti is the story of a young Himba woman whose life and clan revolve around math and engineering. Her people never leave their home, so the news of her acceptance into Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy, is bittersweet. Binti loves learning, and the opportunity to participate in a program with such a fabulous reputation is of course very exciting. However, that means leaving her home, her family, her friends, everything she has known. It also means that her people will not necessarily see her the same way, as they don’t believe their people should leave. I really liked this element of the story. Binti is trying to do something she loves, learn as much as she can, but cultural tradition and expectations force her to feel like she is not just journeying to a far away school, but abandoning protocol in a way that will alienate her from everything she has ever known forever. That is a very hard choice to make! Binti herself, as a character? What can I say? She is a woman who loves math. As a person who took 400 level math classes for fun in college, this immediately endeared…

Here’s a rundown of the books we think you should look out for in coming in the week. See any that you are really looking forward to? Find any you had not heard of yet? Know of books we missed? We know we don’t have everything and would love to hear what you feel we may have overlooked.   FANTASY          HORROR     FANTASY                             HORROR         FANTASY                  HORROR    

Funny how I’m generally not big on anthropomorphism but at the same time I do seem to love a lot of books featuring fluffy, furry adorable sentient animals (Redwall, Watership Down, Mouse Guard, etc.) Thus the draw of Daniel Polansky’s The Builders won out, and it was also perfect because I’ve been meaning to check out his work for a long time. The animals in this book are far from soft and cuddly, though. A mouse, a stoat, an opossum, a badger, a salamander, a mole, and an owl all walk into a bar. This however is not the beginning of a joke but a start of a Kill Bill-style tale of vengeance and bloody destruction. One upon a time, all of them stood united against a common enemy, until treachery destroyed the group from within. The last job they were all on together didn’t end so well, so now the battle-hardened mouse known as the Captain is rounding up his old pals again for one last hurrah. But alas, you know what they say about the best laid schemes of mice and men. Before long, both bullets and fur will fly in abundance, as the Captain and his ragtag…

The Last Witness by K. J. Parker is dark and deceitful, yet addictive novella. These two aspects are spun together for a truly fascinating story and one hell of a protagonist that you might not like, but you can’t help but want to know more about. It’s a book that doesn’t shy away from the darker side of humanity, it actually relishes in it. I’ve only read one other book by Parker, but I feel this story was every bit as intriguing as The Folding Knife and has reinforced my need to read more by the author. The narrator has the unique ability to enter someone’s mind and remove their memories.  This can be to relieve a person of unbearable memories, or perhaps to clear a witness of potentially damaging knowledge. The catch here though, is that these memories then become his own. Since it is usually not happy, loving memories that people have removed, he is left with countless disturbing, graphic memories that can be haunting. And while the narrator never forgets a detail, he can sometimes lose track of which memories are his own versus which are memories he has taken from others. This provides an interesting perspective for the…