Book 35 - Coming to Love the Creepy Crawlies

Title: Dawn (Book 1 of Lilith's Brood) Author: Octavia Butler Genre: organic heebie-jeebie sci-fi

I think Octavia Butler might just be my favourite author of all time. I'm sure that conviction will change once I read something else amazing by some other hyper-talented author, but every single time I read another product of Butler's brain, my love and adoration for her comes screaming back to me. I want to soak in her mind, in the magical pools where her imagination does it's holy work.

What I'm trying to say is, I LOVE THIS BOOK.

Butler's writing is effortless and mesmerizing, carefully balancing between feeding your curiosity for the world into which she's welcomed you, and tantalizing you with the mystery of the unknown. The story follows Lillith, an Awakened survivor of a terrible war that occurred on Earth. She's Awakened in captivity of fundamentally nonhuman aliens, and we follow her as she comes to terms with her new reality, and with the aliens' plans for her and the remainder of the human race.

Sounds big. Sounds like a big, lights-in-the-sky, hover-craft kind of story. It isn't. It's so much more...organic than all that. It's not so much about the SPAAACE side of science fiction; it's more on the molecular level, the who-are-we-when-we're-not-us side of things. Butler is one of those authors who can convey the unimaginable. For example, the skin-crawling, heart-wrenching, uncontrollable fear of what is different - Lilith has to acclimate to the sheer alienness of the Oankali, and as a reader we come to know her absolute repulsion as our own.

There are three books in this series. SEE YOU IN THE NEXT ONE.

Rating: 🐙 🐙 🐙 🐙 🐙/5