Fledgling

Paperback, 310 pages

English language

Published Aug. 7, 2007 by Warner Books.

ISBN:
978-0-446-69616-6
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
77122471

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4 stars (44 reviews)

Shori is a mystery. Found alone in the woods, she appears to be a little black girl with traumatic amnesia and near-fatal wounds. But Shori is a fifty-three-year-old vampire with a ravenous hunger for blood, the lost child of an ancient species of near-immortals who live in dark symbiosis with humanity. Genetically modified to be able to walk in daylight, Shori now becomes the target of a vast plot to destroy her and her kind. And in the final apocalyptic battle, her survival will depend on whether all humans are bigots-or all bigots are human.

18 editions

Review of 'Fledgling' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Yet another very good tale from Octavia Butler. The vampire theme treatment is most interesting especially with its use as an allegory for racism and hatred. Like all of Butler's novel, I would recommend it to anyone looking for a unique, interesting, thought-provoking perspective.

Review of 'Fledgling' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Esse não é um livro de vampiros e ao mesmo tempo é um dos melhores livros de vampiros que já li. Essas afirmações contraditórias fazem sentido nesse livro de Octavia Butler.

Não é um livro em que vampiros são homens brancos, sedutores e enfileireiram conquistas, não é um livro de predadores desalmados. Na realidade a protagonista inverte o que se pensa sobre vampiros. É uma menina, pequena, negra e sem memória. Uma das suas principais características, assim como a de seu povo é perceber sentimentos, histórias. Por isso em vários momentos são descritos como tendo uma relação mutualista com os humanos.
Da mesma forma, a discussão sobre gênero e racismo presente é sublime. O modo como a autora trabalha os conceitos de espécie e a aceitação de algo nefasto como o racismo por ter vindo de uma nobre família, é um retrato vivaz de nós mesmos.

Contudo o ritmo da …

Review of 'Fledgling' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

Fledgling is a vampire story about racism and ableism in a community which thought they were immune to such concerns. A persistent search for justice in a supernatural community.

This is a book built of quiet moments and aftercare, processing trauma and building a new life from the ashes of the old. It’s also a damn good vampire story, with a rich mythology and a kind of vampirism built on community and family history, rather than the usual legacy of sires and victims. I love this book, it's a quieter read than most of the other vampire books I like (normally I lean into urban fantasy), but the way it pays attention to people is subtly powerful. 

This book has a version of polyamory which was intriguing. The presence of vampires mingled with humans and the way that complicates questions of consent is explored really well. The MC is not …

Review of 'Fledgling' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

thematically thought-provoking and story was engaging and managed to be fun and even sort of light without minimizing the import of its themes. I didn't particularly like it stylistically -- after the first rebirth section before Shori bonds with her first human, it was extremely dialogue-heavy, which ended up feeling very much "telling, not showing" and that got old very fast.

Review of 'Fledgling' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

The protagonist begins her story with no awareness or memory, primordially in a cave, ascending from raw hunger and ignorance of even her name. Every experience and conversation, she remembers or deduces more about who she was, what caused her to lose everything, and how she can take back control over her life.

This is where the archetypal mythos ends. Her character is a "male gaze" trope: hyper-rational underage female who enjoys No Strings Attached sex with older men. It's okay that physically she appears 11 years old, because she's actually a 53 year old vampire.

Record scratch

This is a simplistic story with a specific erotica-like payoff. Like another recent read, Peter Hamilton's book "Reality Dysfunction," which I called "success porn" for its single-minded focus on making its reader/protagonist a success in every scenario, Butler's I'll call "control porn." The protagonist starts incredibly vulnerable, but quickly discovers her power: …

Review of 'Fledgling' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

There is no denying that this was an ambitious novel. From the outset, Butler makes it clear that she has a powerful, unique interpretation of the vampire genre and intends to explore it in depth. And that aspect of it, the world building, is truly impressive. What’s more, in every chapter of the novel, the reader discovers more about that world and we are gradually given the impression of a rich and ancient culture living parallel to our own.
However, I almost feel that, such was the strength of Butler’s vision, that she allowed to take over to the detriment of everything else.

This isn’t quite the Silmarillion, but I found myself reading this book increasingly as I might an academic text rather than a work of fiction. In fact, it read as nothing quite so much as a philosophical thought experiment - and as one, it is fascinating: throughout …

Review of 'Fledgling' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

This is the worst book that I managed to complete.

Horrible plot, pedophilia.

If Butler wanted to challenge the reader with layers of metafiction, she needed something better on the surface layer. It could be an interesting commentary on race and slavery, power and sexuality, or choice and coercion - and maybe it would have developed into a well-rounded argument with companion novels - but this is the book we have. This is the whole of the story and it's disjointed and clumsy and frequently icky.

Review of 'Fledgling' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

If you've read a lot of sexy vampire fiction, this doesn't depart too far from from the template. If you haven't¸this isn't a bad place to start, (although if you don't like sexy vampire fiction, I don't think this will change your mind or anything).

Notable departures include:
- instead of 'new vampire' explaining it to the reader, the protag is a vampire with an acquired brain injury who has lost her past and needs to discover who she is.
- if your problem is a sensitivity to the sun, maybe investigate melanin?
- relatedly, creepy fetishization of whiteness which can sometimes feature in the genre is absent.
- sexy vampire feeding is made explicit; protagonist is not so much bisexual as sexually attracted to her regular feeding partners; it's pretty much her sexual orientation.
- mandatory polyamory if you don't want to kill your regular feeding partners from blood-loss? …

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Subjects

  • Vampires
  • Speculative Fiction
  • Fiction
  • Fantasy

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