“A stunner.” —Flea, musician and actor, The Wall Street Journal
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 ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler, including rare images from the author’s estate.
Goodreads Ratings: 4.17 stars with over 85,000 ratings
Genre Listing: Fiction, Dystopia, Science Fiction, Post Apocalyptic, Speculative Fiction
Goodreads Reading Challenge: 20/50 (Heyyyy, I'm finally caught up!)
2021 Reading Challenge: #47 Read a book with
Book Review:
Happy whatever day it is, Readers. I've completely lost any clue as to what day it is this week. I took Friday off and had Monday off for Memorial Day. Now I feel like I'm Robin Williams in the original Jumanji asking what year is it.
Anyway, I picked up Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler sometime late Friday early Saturday Morning. It's a bit of a unique pick for me because of the religious undertones, but ultimately I had been eyeing it for a few weeks on Kindle Unlimited. I liked the concept, and the cover art really drew me in.
The book follows Lauren Olmania, a teenager trying to survive a harsh world with her family after the world goes to hell. The build to the world being absolutely insane is a slow build, and it's not overly apparent until a few chapters into the story. Once the reader gets to know Lauren a bit, it's explained that communities are walled off, water is as good as gold, and that outside the walls is complete anarchy. I don't think it's genuinely understood how desperate the outside world is until Lauren's brother Kieth runs away from home.
Keith leaving home is the start of a lot of unfortunate events for Lauren and her community. This ultimately pushes Lauren outside of the wall as well. That's when we really start to understand the world she lives in. Arson, rape, robbery, murder, and cannibalism are just another day for the characters. What I never really understood was what caused the world to be that way. The book starts in 2024, but beyond a brief statement or two about Climate Change, it's really never explained why Lauren's world is post-apocalyptic.
I enjoyed the survival aspect of this story. Lauren, despite her age, is brilliant. She often came across as older than because of her intelligence. This is actually addressed in the story due to her stepmother and father being teachers and teaching her. She graduated high school relatively young and then went into college classes. She also helped her stepmother teach the community's children. I thought Lauren was resourceful and came across as a leader. Her hyperempathy was interesting, but I don't know that it was essential to the story. If it had not been included, it wouldn't really have taken away from the story all that much.
Where the story started losing me was the whole Earthseed thing. This is a concept that Lauren starts to explain her views on God. She starts journaling everything, and the story is presented in journal form. Some of the ideas she expresses are interesting, but they began to veer a little too close to Heaven's Gate for my liking. (For those playing the at-home game, Heaven's Gate was a cult that committed group suicide so they would board a UFO and transcend into immortal beings.) So, the whole purpose of Earthseed is that God isn't a person. God is change (Okay, I can actually understand this.) However, after an astronaut died on their way to Mars, Lauren has decided that Earthseed's destiny lies among the stars and that they need to gather follows and make a living in Space. In the story, Oregon, Washington, and Canada seem to be the promised land for Californians trying to escape. So as Lauren tries to travel to safety, it becomes her pilgrimage to acquire followers for Earthsed. Along the way, plans are made for the community they are going to develop.
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler addresses many deep topics, and I genuinely feel that it was ahead of its time when it was initially published in 1993. It's won a ton of awards since then, and I can understand why. As a survival story, Octavia found a way to address racism, climate change, rape, and even includes modern slavery. These aren't even all of the diverse topics it manages to discuss in its 330 pages. A lot of it was tough to read, which I think is the point. While reading it, I kept thinking, "Hell. This is only three years away and feels completely plausible." So for Octavia E. Butler to have this foresight thirty years ago (cries in getting old) is remarkable.
Overall, I enjoyed the story. I liked Lauren as the main character. I appreciated her intelligence, her resilience, resourcefulness, and the leadership she provided her group. The speculative future was eerie but still exciting to read. What kept this from being a four or five star for me was the cult-esq religion and the fact that barely eighteen-year-old ends up falling for a fifty-seven-year-old. Sorry. I try to be open-minded about things, but this was just a little cringy to me. The story does manage to address both, however. At one point, Lauren is asked if her religion is a cult, and she and her guy do have a discussion about the age difference. (Sorry, I can't remember his name.) I don't know if I'll end up finishing the series. I'm not ruling it out, but it's not anything I feel that I have to read right away.
I thought P.O.T.S. was a fantastic book. I first read it because I was intrigued by hearing of people who'd read it 14 times and anther person said they'd read it 21 times. I thought, "Wow! This book must certainly be worth me reading it at least once." I was NOT disappointed. I'm not surprised that preppers love it. College professors recommend it to their students. It's well worth at lease one read through.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. I honestly wish I got more enjoyment out of it than I did. I've thought about finishing the series, but not sure I would enjoy them. Glad you enjoyed it, however!
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