295 pages
English language
Published Aug. 8, 1995 by Warner.
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.
This was The Road level of depressing, not sure I'll read the sequel.
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.
[mild spoilers] There were a lot of things I didn't like about this book, but it's well worth a read.
First, the main character starts to think through her own religion, complete with scripture verses. I had a hard time taking the verses seriously, since they were so broad as to be meaningless. Second, the romances seemed forced and awkward. Still, there's a ton to think about, especially in the meaning of community and its relevance today.
Great story, featuring excellent writing that has truly held up over the decades. Only a few of the ideas presented here seem dated or goofy (primarily the language used to address futuristic drugs). For whatever reason, I didn't immediately consider the potential differences between a post-apocalyptic book written by a woman of color and similar books I'd explored that were written by white men or women. Having a strong, black female youth as a narrator is refreshing, and the maximized potential for even more obvious and egregious examples of class war, racial tension, and misogyny as "civilization" breaks down is explored more comprehensively than in any other work of fiction I've read. Thus, the landscape described by Butler seems (sadly) infinitely more realistic. Looking forward to the next book in the series.
Good read, though almost unremittingly bleak and brutal.
