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Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML: In a "haunting, apocalyptic, compelling" near future, one man and his daughters must stop an alien virus from becoming a deadly global epidemic (Essence). Blake Maslin and his two daughters are driving to Flagstaff when bandits swarm their car. At gunpoint, the marauders kidnap one of Blake's children, promising to keep her safe in return for medical care. Warily, the doctor goes with them, not realizing that he has just taken the first step down a terrifying path that will consume his life. The gunmen take him deep into the desert, to a colony of people infected with a gruesome alien disease. It causes weakness, sallow skin, and birth defects so horrible that the children who suffer them cannot rightly be called human. The victims have quarantined themselves in the desert lest their illness spread and doom mankind. But as their willingness to accept isolation falters, Blake becomes the last hope for the survival of an uncontaminated Earth. Octavia E. Butler's groundbreaking and award-winning science fiction and dystopian novels have inspired generations of readers all over the world. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler including rare images from the author's estate..… (more)
User reviews
The structure of the story very much reminds me of the movie Memento. Two, seemingly unrelated narrative paths, one in the past and one in the present, slowly converging and from that point the real story begins. I think that was an interesting approach to the story - not quite as compelling as Memento, but then again, Butler's not trying to heighten the suspense, just to tell the story of Eli and how he came into the situation he's in.
The most interesting part to me was that I found myself empathizing with both Blake and his family and Eli and his family. Blake was obviously desperate and was trying like hell to save both his family and the world. Eli motivations, though, were exactly the same. Exactly. But he had the constraint of the aliens who demanded that he infect or reinfect others often.
The book was quite good, in my humble opinion. Short and to the point, but promoting solid ideas and presenting a reasonable (if not viable) potential future.
The novel is about the point of transition, when the humans are beginning to change into something different. How does it feel to let go of your humanity, to be driven by compulsions that you don't recognize? Butler does a good job of staying at that tight edge between will and inevitability.
The weakest book in the series, but still has a lot of thoughts about power.
The book feels explorative (if that's a world) and explores power in a sci-fi setting to avoid some of our built-in biases.
This tells the story of a doctor and his
This book is a bit similar to Fledgeling, Butler's final novel, and suffers some of the same weaknesses. It's long on explication, violating that classic writing rule: "show don't tell". Her other books I've read (Wild Seed, Kindred) don't have this problem.
But what I found most troubling is that the theme seems to be that this community is doing what it can to avoid destroying the world, which is clearly a hopeless endeavor in the long term if they continue to live on the same planet. They have some ethical boundaries they won't cross, but apparently kidnapping innocent passersby and forcibly infecting them is not quite over the line! Maybe future books will reveal Butler has a similar point of view, but it doesn't seem like it.
Since the book took place in 2021 and was written in 1984,
This book seems to be a mix of both Dawn and the Parables, having the society of the Parables and the alien reproductive interference of Dawn. I am interested to see how Clay's Ark plays into the next Patternist novel.