Parable of the Sower

I'm not fond of depressing openings.

This was amazing. I'm not sure how much I connected with the Earthseed side of it, and I'm not sure how much most of the characters in the book connect with it either, but as a survival novel it is kick-ass. In a world that very uncomfortably resembles our current one, only a decade or two in the future if we continue on the path we are on, Lauren and her family face dangers of epic proportions. Then, once away from the gated community, she enters a Mad Max style of world that is even more terrifying. Somehow, in this setting, Butler still manages to ask the BIG questions:
-Safety in a community?
-Climate change
-Country-wide unemployment
-water shortages and police fees
-the danger of bringing new life into the world that is so very messed up
and so much more

I already uploaded Talents to continue the series.

Ohhhh boy. Ahahaha. Oh man. WOOOH. This is. Too close to home. YEP.

❤️ In some ways so hard to read but grabs your attention and keeps you turning the page.
Butler is so talented.

I really like Butler's writing style and imagination. I also love that I know I won't have to overlook heaps of misogyny to be able to enjoy her stories.

This dystopian world didn't feel far-fetched at all. Everything about it seemed almost one step away from where we are now. In the Twitter Age, we communicate about these kinds of things all the time on social media, but in 1993 I imagine the it was a little more novel, being before the YA dystopian craze that followed The Hunger Games. Adding the hyperempathy element was also interesting if not all that critical to the story.

All in all, I struggled to connect with the characters and main goal of the protagonist. That's not necessarily Butler's fault as books centered around religion tend to not be my thing. I think how religion is formed is interesting though, and this was intriguing in that way. I also liked Lauren's steadfastness. She's so much older than her years. I found the dystopian and survival aspects of the book the most interesting and tended to glaze over the Earthseed stuff. I read it all, but those parts left my head immediately upon finishing the words. Given the book become more and more about Earthseed as events unfold, that hindered my overall enjoyment.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me a copy of this in exchange for my open and honest review.

This is a faithful adaptation of Olivia Butler's Parable of the Sower story. It is being adapted, Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the same team that tackled Butler's Kindred story.

Initially, I was apprehensive about reading and reviewing Parable of the Sower. It is a story I do not like, to no fault of Butler's beautiful writing. For some reason, the first time I read Parable, there was something about it that disturbed me deeply. Maybe it is how lyrically she describes the bleak future. Perhaps it is the repetition of the word, change. I am not sure. I was hoping that reading the graphic adaptation to the story would lend to some greater insight and love of the story. And it did.

The Sower story is a heavy dystopian story about a world that has drastically changed from our own. The environment has been all but destroyed, wild packs of dogs and cannibals roam the hills. Lauren, the lead protagonist of the story, is trying o find her own spirt and religion in the form of journal keeping while the world around her changes.

Adding the graphic element to the story helped nail down the visuals for me as a reader that was slightly murky on the first read. The graphics in the story are beautifully done. It is done as a monochromatic palette of oranges and reds, and I think that lends to the story and was a good design choice.

Even with the beautiful graphics and faithful adaptation, this still isn't a story I want to come back to. However, that should not keep other people from reading this and starting this journey with Lauren. Butler is a powerful and lyrical writer. She infuses every word she writes with emotion, and for some readers, this story is an emotional, beautiful journey.

Another “it gets better” book. I had abandoned this some months ago, at about ten percent, because of violence I found uncomfortable and religious overtones I found tedious. A friend convinced me to give it another go, and I'm mostly glad I did: it remained a disturbing read, but also developed thoughtful themes of trust, compassion, attachment (in Buddhist and other senses), and the fragility of civilization. I don't understand the economics of her world nor some of the character motivations, which diminished my enjoyment somewhat. I haven't decided yet whether to continue with the trilogy.

I enjoyed it as I was reading it but it feels like only part of a story? I'm going to have to read Parable of the Talents to see if it completes it in a satisfying way. There was no real arc in this—perhaps a rising action, but maybe it rises to something in the sequel.

This was written long enough ago that it was, I believe, meant to be a near-future-within-our-lifetimes dystopia, but since I'm reading it a good 15+ years after it was published, it's set less than 10 years in the actual future, which was an interesting change of pace.

As dystopians have gotten ridiculously popular in the last decade, I've read my fair share of them. Some of them made sense with actual potential real world events (Station Eleven, The Circle), some of them were set presumably far enough in the future that it's possible to suspend some belief (The Hunger Games), and some of them I couldn't see how this dystopia would ever have happened based on how the actual real world works (Divergent, The Selection).

What I liked about Parable of the Sower is that it wasn't too far a stretch to see how things got so bad in this California future: Climate change reduces supply of things like water and food, demand drives up costs, people can't find jobs that pay, people have very limited senses of their own safety, poverty and desperation make people do violent, terrible, and also stupid things to stay alive. Overall I liked the main character, Lauren, and her desire to read and learn how to save herself and her attempts to get her family to take this seriously. I liked most of the cast of characters Lauren ends up traveling with too. There was a lot of interaction in learning who could be trusted, in using your instincts to determine the truths and the lies people tell in trying to stay alive.

I was really wrapped up in this world. The only thing I wasn't crazy about, honestly, was the religion/belief system that Lauren was “discovering”/divining. To me, it felt like it could have been plucked out and replaced with literally any religion or cult system, and it would have felt exactly the same. The only urgency in the religion came from Lauren, and I never got the sense that anyone else believed in it the same way she did. They didn't need to, in order to still be part of her community!

I just found out this is the first of two books, so maybe they explain more of this in the next one. I'll probably pick it up later, to see what happens.

TW: rape (including child rape), sexual abuse, incest, physical violence (including against children), slavery, drug abuse.

“I'm trying to speak - to write - the truth. I'm trying to be clear. I'm not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.”

This is the second Octavia E. Butler book I've read, after Kindred, and it's a very different beast. Both novels fall in to the YA category but whilst I immediately handed Kindred over to my thirteen year old daughter when I'd finished it, I'd be hesitant to pass Parable of the Sower on. This dystopian nightmare is one of the most brutal and ruthless books I've ever read. The violence and the visceral hatred that seeps from the pages really got to me, perhaps because what in 1993, when the book was published, was a distant and unimaginable future is now looming and alarmingly possible. The only relief from the unending horrors was the insights into the creation of Earthseed, the brainchild of our protagonist; a new religion where God is change and the ultimate goal of the human race is to leave earth and live amongst the stars, because who in their right mind would want to remain on the planet in the state it's in? I enjoyed being witness to its development, especially seeing how it affected each of the characters.

This was a hard book to get through. I found Butler's blunt and clipped writing style difficult to gel with at first, and the bleakness of the story made me quite reticent to keep returning to it. I'm still not entirely sure I'm glad I pressed on with it, or indeed if I'll continue with the series. Maybe after a long break.

This was WAY more violent and fucked up than I had anticipated. I liked it. Plus, the protagonist is named Lauren.

Bleak, though not quite what I expected.

While it doesn't top Xenogenesis as my favorite Butler writing, I think I read this book at a very apt time. It is one of those stories that is becoming relevant yet again. You think we humans would figure out ways to avoid dystopian apocalypse instead of continuing to follow every fictional plotline leading up to that apocalypse ever, wouldn't you? Butler's is particularly grim as the thesis behind this dystopia isn't a zombie plague or alien invasion, but a simple matter of too many otherwise intelligent people ignoring major problems until it it too late to fix them, over and over again.

Of course, since it is Butler, one difficult to tackle theme is not enough. This book exlores race relationships, the nature of empathy vs, survival, and a philosophy of embracing “shit happens” to a religious level. I can get behind the philosphy of Earthseed. I definitely want to continue on to the next parable as soon as I take a break to go back to ignoring the problems of my own society. Life is a cabaret, old chum.

So good, the best near-term science fiction outside of (and maybe including) Margaret Atwood. The religion invented by the protagonist is totally plausible and fits the themes when it could have been just a throwaway.

Short review: Butler is such a distinctive voice. It is too bad that she passed away so young and that this series was not rounded out. There was a planned third book, but it never made it past the notes stage.

I have read a lot of modern dystopian novels that tend toward YA. It is interesting to go back and read older dystopian novels. This does not have the humor of Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins. But it does have the social commentary, albeit more directly about race, gender and power structures. It is not quite as violent and gruesome as Cormac McCarthy's The Road (published a decade after Sower). But it is stark and plenty gruesome on its own.

The Parable of the Sower is still dystopian, but it trying to show how humanity rises up out of dystopian setting, not how the innate sinfulness of humanity descends into dystopia without the structure of society.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/parable-sower-octavia-butler/

Seed from a flawed fruit
spotting a place to take root
don't mind the fresh bones.

A quick read, if not an easy one. Similar to [b:The Road 6288 The Road Cormac McCarthy https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1600241424l/6288.SY75.jpg 3355573], though slightly less grim. I thought it was a little heavy-handed at times and overall the plot and characters could've used some tightening up.

About halfway done, and I think this is my fave Butler book so far, out of a handful of books I've read by her. It's got a very simple plot structure, but a fascinating central character.

———————
An odd thing happened as I finished up the book–it's a great start to a larger tale, but the writing weakened as it went on. Lots of wonderful ideas here, and it's sadly refreshing to read a book with lots of people of color, but in the end the execution is lacking, for me, in a way that all of the other Butler books I've read weren't lacking. It seems like a sketch for a story, rather than a story.

I do love the idea of Earthseed as a religion, even though I'm mostly anti-religion, and because of that I'll likely read the second book as well, even though the third book of the trilogy was never written...

I'll add that Butler's dystopia is perhaps a little too realistic for me: I think she sees what is actually coming, which makes reading this book chilling.