Octavia E. Butler: Parable of the Sower (2023, Grand Central Publishing)
English language
Published 2023 by Grand Central Publishing.
In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.
When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean …
In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.
When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.
Absolutely brutal dystopia, and it feels so real it hurts. Recommended like a painful stretch after a long hike through difficult terrain.
I accidentally wound up with both the novel and the graphic novel based on the novel of Parable of the Sower. I read them together, reading ahead a bit in one, then going back to the other and reading to catch up and a bit ahead again. Wow, the story is excellent, and all the characters were really very interesting and complex.
blew my mind, changed the way i see the world and my fears and vision of future. but gave me hope. Realllly hard to drive n a freeway in so called los angeles and stare at the land on the sides.......
This was The Road level of depressing, not sure I'll read the sequel.
Parable of the Sower: Graphic Novel
by Octavia E. Butler,
adaptation by Damian Duffy and John Jennings
This is a tricky one to review. On the one hand, there is the stellar story behind this adaption. Butler was a master of the field, weaving powerful prose with profound ideas to create something transcendent, at times.
The Parable of the Sower novel is deep, and compelling, and important.
It is a story of humanity in danger, of faith and creed and hope. It is about race and love and humanity. It is a story worth reading, for anyone.
The idea of a graphic novel adaptation is a good one. I like graphic novels. It can be tricky, though, to adapt books to visual form (just like to movies) because you can't do everything. You have to balance the words and the pictures, so some words get left out. Obviously, it can …
Parable of the Sower: Graphic Novel
by Octavia E. Butler,
adaptation by Damian Duffy and John Jennings
This is a tricky one to review. On the one hand, there is the stellar story behind this adaption. Butler was a master of the field, weaving powerful prose with profound ideas to create something transcendent, at times.
The Parable of the Sower novel is deep, and compelling, and important.
It is a story of humanity in danger, of faith and creed and hope. It is about race and love and humanity. It is a story worth reading, for anyone.
The idea of a graphic novel adaptation is a good one. I like graphic novels. It can be tricky, though, to adapt books to visual form (just like to movies) because you can't do everything. You have to balance the words and the pictures, so some words get left out. Obviously, it can work, as the comics creators behind this one created a wonderful award-winning adaptation of Kindred.
But judging that success is wholly dependent upon the art, and the art in this eARC is not finished. I assume so, anyway, because these are sketches, The faces aren't drawn at all in some panels, with the guidelines there to show where eyes, mouth etc. go. Some characters are fully drawn in, but many are barely ghosts. There is no coloring at all.
So I can't judge the art. I'm sure it will be fine when it's done, but it's not done, so I can only judge the verbal adaptation: the cuts and changes made to fit a novel to a graphic format.
And that is all pretty smooth. It works to focus on the dialog, mostly. It can be hard in some scenes, without the accompanying art, to know who is talking to whom. The action can be hard to follow as well.
But the characters come through. The narrative beats hit, and the story works, which is to be expected, since this is Octavia Butler's story.
I just wish I could see how it works as a graphic novel.
Not unlike a lot of Octavia Butler readers, this is the first book of hers I read. And I will definitely be reading more. I just like how she thinks and tells a story. I thought this was going to be some kind of grand adventure, and while it does have some elements that are adventurous, it's more character development and philosophy. Yes, it's a bit preachy, but I didn't mind. It felt real. The thoughts of the narrator felt real. The actions felt real. The deaths felt real.
I picked this up because I love sci-fi and even dystopian, but mostly because I'm sick of stories that follow the people on the top - King's and queens, military men and women, the ultra rich.
Narration was perfect for the material. Almost monotonous, but to me it never felt wrong.
I'm looking forward to reading more of her work.
Truly prescient story about collapse, climate change, belief and humanity.
It touches on so much about human nature and our belief systems, and what it is like to survive in a hostile world whose structures are crumbling.
It is a bleak and grim read, but not without hope and brimming with ideas. Must read!
Quite a striking work of fiction, and one that's unforgettable. Very credibly-crafted tale of resilience in the face of unbelievable woe, and one that seems unfortunately fairly likely to occur if the world keeps on its current course.
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Update: 6 months later, this book turns out to be one that I think of almost daily. It was hard to really grasp the gravity of the tales therein, or just how appropriate they are for the currently nigh-apocalyptic world we live in.
Most intriguing.. quite deep and profound study of humanity, religion, faith and destiny.
I loved this book. For some reason, I've read a handful of dystopian futuristic novels recently and of the bunch this was the most engaging because it's about how one girl (late adolescent) develops her own understanding of what matters and what it all means and what she should do to bring others together as well as exploring how people can organize themselves when social institutions fail. Yes, it's bleak; this is a future horribly damaged by greed and exploitation of the planet and people. But it's also about finding community and rebuilding. I found it much more interesting than other books in large part because the narrator was going to do what she could to not just save herself, but find a way to rethink how people can live together. Much more philosophical than the more common "fight the power" resistance story or the disaster porn style of dystopia.
If I think of this as YA, it is brilliantly dark and informing, pulling no punches in portraying a dystopian near future of societal collapse and the violence inherent in the preceding and decaying systems, while the young woman telling the story dreams of a bold utopia.
Just re-read this in March/April 2017.
Everyone is talking about reading other books-- 1984, The Handmaid's Tale, It Can't Happen Here -- why don't I hear more people mention this book? It's eerily prescient, hitting exactly the forces we're seeing clearly now, and pushing them further. Chilling.
A depressingly plausible take on the collapse of society. Gripping but not melodramatic and hopeful without being overwrought.
When an empire falls, what do you rebuild? This is the crucial questions of Butler's insightful and provocative book.
