Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1)

248 pages

English language

Published Dec. 26, 1997

ISBN:
978-0-446-60377-5
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Goodreads:
60929

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4 stars (85 reviews)

Lilith Iyapo has just lost her husband and son when atomic fire consumes Earth—the last stage of the planet’s final war. Hundreds of years later Lilith awakes, deep in the hold of a massive alien spacecraft piloted by the Oankali—who arrived just in time to save humanity from extinction. They have kept Lilith and other survivors asleep for centuries, as they learned whatever they could about Earth. Now it is time for Lilith to lead them back to her home world, but life among the Oankali on the newly resettled planet will be nothing like it was before.

The Oankali survive by genetically merging with primitive civilizations—whether their new hosts like it or not. For the first time since the nuclear holocaust, Earth will be inhabited. Grass will grow, animals will run, and people will learn to survive the planet’s untamed wilderness. But their children will not be human. Not …

3 editions

Can't get it out of my head

5 stars

Exciting read, one of the books I couldn't put down. It's a very interesting analysis of humans and how they live together, and thoughts about if a kind of "benevolent dictator" would make it better or worse. I feel like the book doesn't come to a conclusion on its own, but let's readers think about it and opens some really interesting questions I hadn't really thought about before. The characters and development are great, and the story is well written and very entertaining besides making me think.

dawn

4 stars

The Oankali have strange and disturbing ideas about consent, which makes this an uncomfortable book to read. (This is, like, intentional, though.)

There's a disregard for singular 'they' as a genderless pronoun, instead 'it' is used to refer to the Ooloi; this doesn't feel as bad as it might because it's apparently the pronoun that the Ooloi chose to use for themselves in English

The biggest problem I have with it technically is that not all that much happens for much of the book? At least the first half is spent with Lilith just learning things about the Oankali. Which is interesting, but pretty slow

Review of 'Dawn' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I'm not sure I've read other books with aliens that seemed as believable. This book definitely had moments of discomfort. As a reader, you're meant to feel both xenophobia and xenophilia, hope and despair, often about the same subjects sometimes and sometimes in the same in the same moment.

This book made me think about what it means to be human, what it means to be sentient, what respect means, and how right and wrong are malleable. Nothing is black and white in this book.

I think this book could stand on its own, but it's definitely part of a series and I plan to read the other books in this series eventually.

Review of 'Dawn' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Fascinating read (and a breezy one, too!); I really liked the premise and the worldbuilding in this, just incredibly imaginative and overflowing with opportunities for ethical and social dilemmas. I read in other reviews people call the main character annoying or obstinate, but I found myself understanding her positions more often than not. I'll have to read the rest of the trilogy, as the book is a major tease and doesn't even begin to resolve the plot by the end.

Review of 'Dawn' on 'LibraryThing'

4 stars

I read this in a day and haven't stopped thinking about in the couple of weeks since. It's an incredibly uncomfortable read. At the end I was angry with Butler for writing such a grotesque scenario, but on reflection that reaction amounts to shooting the messenger. It's an absolutely brutal exploration of what complete loss of autonomy does to people

Review of 'Dawn' on 'LibraryThing'

4 stars

I read this in a day and haven't stopped thinking about in the couple of weeks since. It's an incredibly uncomfortable read. At the end I was angry with Butler for writing such a grotesque scenario, but on reflection that reaction amounts to shooting the messenger. It's an absolutely brutal exploration of what complete loss of autonomy does to people

Review of 'Dawn' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I really wanted to give this 5 stars just for the sheer novelty of the work (and the fact I binge read it in one day, so you know it's decent) but couldn't quite because I think there were a few flaws in the handling of the human and aliens. There was not enough variety in personality: it just did not make sense to me, in this world where you can find tentacle porn fetish folk (in fairness maybe the author didn't know those people existed?), that every single human would flinch from the aliens on sight, or that they would have to be so damn coercive and have to force /all/ the humans to have no options but to breed with them in order to crossbreed! Similarly, you'd think a sapient species would have at least one or two conscientious objectors or weirdos instead of all of them universally …

Review of 'Dawn' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

After a nuclear war and the nuclear winter that followed, the remaining humans on planet Earth were rescued by an alien race called the Oankali. The humans were put in suspended animation while the Oankali studied them to learn their biology and then started to repair the Earth so humans could live on it again. Now it is 250 years later and a woman named Lilith is awakened. The Oankali hope that she will be able to “parent” the first small band of colonists that they want to return to Earth.

When I was participating in Diversiverse I heard about Octavia Butler. She comes up in discussions that start with “Any people of color writing science fiction besides Octavia Butler?” I felt remiss in never having read her books. Dawn was written in 1977 and is the first in a trilogy.

I don’t read a lot of hard science fiction …

Review of 'Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1)' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Wow. I usually hate hard sci-fi. But this was captivating -- Butler taps into ideas about what makes us humans, at a core, biological level. As a parent, the concept of what we desire for our offspring - the desire for sameness in our offspring competing with a desire for the greatness beyond what one could desire for oneself was very compelling.

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