Fledgling

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 narrativa é lento, entre descrições de marcas de carro e de refeições feitas os personagens vampiros, a exceção da peotagonista, ficam em arquétipos. A amnésia é um clichê já usado, e aqui ele é usado da mesma maneira que em outros lugares. E a relação com um ser que aparenta ser uma criança é estranha demais. Em vários momentos ela é descrita como sendo desejável por outros vampiros, ainda que ela seja uma criança. Durante o julgamento inclusive ela busca se valer disso. E por mais que entenda que a personagem tem 53 anos e uma capacidade de dar prazer e conquistar, isso não muda o fato de que ela tem a aparência de uma criança e todas as suas relações positivas são sexuais.

Enfim, infelizmente não vai ter uma continuação, mas adoraria.

tldr: pedofilia vampírica, política vampírica, racismo vampírico.

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 a child in human years but has the appearance of a child, this might make some readers uncomfortable when she engages in adult behaviors (like sex), so please take care of your boundaries when reading. 

Because the MC has memory loss and does not remember any of her personal history from before the book opens, there are a lot of explanations which can feel repetitive. She's quick to pick up on things, but has to justify herself and her current state of existence over and over. Sometimes this is because of ableist reactions from people around her, assuming that because she has lost one thing (memory) she therefore is unable to do other things (like reason soundly with the information she does have). Her fresh perspective makes this into a story I would recommend for people who are new to vampire stories and people who are very familiar with them because it's a version of the mythos which is new enough to be interesting for those who already  like vampire stories, but it also explains enough to keep newer readers from being lost. While some of the repetition can be irritating, that's obviously on purpose because of the effect it has on the MC and the way different secondary characters ask similar questions. The way this book handles questions of racism in a people who (until now) thought they were categorically immune from it begins subtly and then grows more and more overt as it becomes clear what's happening and how they're wrong about being unable to be racist. The way the MCs age, skin color, lineage, and recent disability are used by some characters to discount her and invalidate her personhood is made explicit in the book without losing the story at all. That's because dealing with the aftereffects of the events right before the book started is the story, it's not some side plot or distraction. It's important and central to the story, and the role which racism plays is crucial to the book. 

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: strength, speed, super healing, and the ability to instantly seduce and control anyone she bites.

More than giving her control of their bodies, her bites make people love her. But she's not better for it. She treats her thralls kindly, and despite her memory loss somehow has an innate moral instinct which justifies her domination. She wins the respect and fear of her own kind for her unique ability to walk in the sunlight. She's the temptation of Tolkien's Galadriel: "All shall love me and despair!"

Ultimately, she discovers who brought her so low and exacts revenge through the vampire justice system, where every reasonable person takes her side. Along the way she recovers her family lands and fortunes, and seduces a business manager to handle everything for her. The end.

This isn't literature; it's a shallow fantasy without metaphor, meaning, or a message. I'm still processing why these fanfic-style stories offend me, and I think it relates to their similarity to a few pulp-style novels I loved as a child: E. E. Doc's groundbreaking sci-fi "Lensman" series and Robert Asprin's "Myth Adventures of Aahz and Skeeve." They are on an endless upward spiral as well, though the former for the improvement and increasing goodness of all of civilization, and the latter, an ever expanding "chosen family" of ragtag characters. Perhaps I should go back and re-read them with older eyes.

Overall, I'm shocked this was written by a Hugo winner, so I'm looking forward to diving into Octavia Butler's acclaimed "Bloodchild" and her Xenogenesis trilogy.

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 the novel it keeps raising and exploring ethical questions through the medium of the narrative. Every chapter, I came away wanting to discuss what I had read with someone else. But the story itself and the characters felt lacking. It seemed Butler would take some effort to introduce each character and then, job done, leave them as just another agent in the text. The only character given any opportunity to develop was the protagonist, and even her journey felt a bit stilted.


As a investigation into the vampire genre and into human morality, it is well worth a read. But as a novel, I was left a little cold.


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?

WARNING: protag appears to be 13, although she's over her half century. It's not fetishized, but she has sex with people while appearing to be 13, so that's there.