If the way Binti used her otjize and her harmonizer’s empathy to turn the Meduse from shipboard killers into partners (and even to bring Okwu to Oomza Uni) hooked you, you’ll love how the Wayfarer’s crew negotiates messy, moving encounters with a spectrum of alien species. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet leans into cross-species understanding, food-and-customs diplomacy, and the same hopeful pivot from fear to connection that Binti forged aboard Third Fish.

You watched Binti leave her Himba home, defy family expectations, and discover who she is beyond Earth and Oomza Uni—balancing heritage, genius, and the changes wrought by her edan and the Meduse. In The Space Between Worlds, Cara travels the multiverse as a marginalized survivor, confronting versions of herself and choosing who she wants to be. It delivers that same electric blend of escape, reinvention, and claiming identity that pulsed through Binti’s journey.

If the clash between Kuurian authority, Oomza Uni politics, and the Meduse—plus Binti’s role as an interpreter who can soothe with otjize—intrigued you, Embassytown goes all-in on how colonizers warp contact. Avice navigates a colony where humans depend on Hosts whose Language can’t lie, and a diplomatic gambit spirals into cultural catastrophe. It echoes Binti’s mediation on a grander scale, interrogating who gets to speak, who listens, and how power shapes peace.

If the intimate, breathless stretch aboard Third Fish—Binti alone with an ancient edan and a ship full of Meduse—kept you turning pages, All Systems Red delivers that same close-focus tension. Murderbot’s voice pulls you into a contained mission that spirals, with personal stakes sharpening every corridor and comms ping. It’s compact, fast, and emotionally punchy in the way Binti’s first voyage is.

Binti’s first-person narration—her otjize rituals, her fear and resolve during the Meduse boarding, her private negotiations for peace—grounds the cosmic in the personal. Rosewater does the same with Kaaro’s voice as he navigates an alien biodome in Nigeria, reading minds, unearthing conspiracies, and wrestling with what the xeno-presence means for his life and community. It’s intimate, strange, and immersive, like riding inside Binti’s thoughts.