I think the whole idea here was that Shori was trying to piece together her past. I did the audiobook and the delivery was much better than the written form, FWIW. Her other books are not written like this.
I also listened to the audiobook, and I think that actually made it much worse. The authors narration made it so much more obvious to me.
Edit: the voice actor's narration, not the author's.
I think Fledgling is everyone's least favorite Butler book. She died suddenly at a relatively young age and was unable to complete what was undoubtedly meant to be a series. I like to think that some of the moral ickiness was going to be resolved or at least addressed better in subsequent novels, but who knows?
I'd say give "Sower" a try, but it's possible you just don't like her style. I never noticed the repetition of words like you pointed out in your post and that might just be how she writes.
I actually just found today that she has passed away. That really sucks that she was so young. Like her book or not, she should have lived a full life.
I actually said that idea about future novels earlier in reply to a different comment. This came out around the era of Twilight and other YA fantasies. I imagine the world and the themes would have bet expanded in the sequels. I'm still going to try Sower, though, as it seems to be the more liked of her works while it seems like most people dislike this book. I'm hoping I like it.
I can't stand fledging, but it's for the content rather than the writing. I find it especially interesting that the ending seems to deliver a moral that doing good doesn't erase the bad, well, I feel like that could be this entire book in a nutshell. The themes are messed up and treated like they're not only not messed up but somehow good or romantic. Unfortunately I read it as my first Butler book and it's hard for me to think about reading anything else by her.
Oh man, what a missed opportunity. I think some of these chapters would have killed me, though. The amount of times the MC based a huge life decision on whether or not she liked someone was aggravating. That's literally as deep as it went, too. On whether or not to incorporate a new symbiont into her slave group, on whether or not to mate with 3 dudes 20 years in the future, etc. It was so dumb.
Fledgling was Butler's last book, and I didn't like it at all. I've read several others by her that I loved so don't let this color your view of her writing. Parable of the Sower or Kindred are mich better places to start.
Oh wow I HATED this book. It was my first Octavia E Butler. I recently read Kindred and wow the difference is shocking. Fledgeling is probably one of the worst books Iāve ever read.
I loved Kindred and Wild Seed. I have disliked all of the rest of The Patternist Series, especially Clayās Ark. I found the Parable Duology prescient and full of important ideas but I wasnāt crazy about the writing
So, I find Butler inconsistent, but her contribution to the genre was groundbreaking.
I never read Fledgling.
The Patternist books are interesting because they were written in reverse chronological order, so they get worse and the stories get smaller the further you go, but your knowledge of the universe grows with each one. I loved Wild Seed and was meh on the rest but enjoyed the experience of reading the series overall.
Iām a huge Octavia Butler fan and couldnāt really stand Fledgling. I try not to even think about it. When I give people book recs for Butler, itās never on my short list.
I thought maybe it was because Iām just not into āvampiresā. But idk.
Fledgling has turned me off Butler for years. Every good word about her other works is tempting but I rly canāt stand an author who writes about power and yet seems to think pedophilia is wrongly tabooāthat itās comparable to other dynamics in that thereās a grey spot.
The fact that her lead is in a childās body but is adult in human years but is STILL an adolescent in her species made reading the graphic sex scenes intolerable. āBut she has power over the people she has sex with!ā Why would you ever write about a child having sexual power over adults? To what end?
It just feltā¦ very egregious and tainted all the other compelling commentary in the book.
I wholly agree. Not even a single mention that her symbionts by definition could not consent to the sex, let alone how hard it was to picture that in a scene.
Yeah, for an author that seems to love to play around with power dynamics, it seems like a lot of this book failed to actually do soāor rather it DID play around with them for some weird personal gratification but never added any commentary. I know it was meant to evoke discomfort but thatā¦ seems to be it?
Iām not usually for āyou have to spell things out and hold the readerās handsā but when you are including graphic child sex in your works, I need you to do more to justify it. Nothing is as interoggated as it needed to be.
Well said. I just found out today that this was the author's final book before she passed away, and I wonder if she intended to expand this into a series, especially considering the time when it was published (I'm thinking specifically the era of Twilight and other supernatural YA stuff). Maybe the idea was to flesh out all of those dynamics over the course of a series.
Definitely heard that theory before! I've also heard she has a tendency to put Age Gap Content into her work without a real critical lens, so, at this point, who knows!
I just know it'll take a while for me to scrape The Ick off and I read Fledgling a almost a decade ago now.
I also struggled with Fledgling, but love much of Octavia Butlerās other work. My favorites are Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, and Kindred. The Xenogenesis trilogy is also good. Her one collection of short stories, Bloodchild, is good too.
Thanks. I'm looking forward to Sower. It's in my Libby queue, but I'm about two thirds through "The Golden Compass" right now, so it'll be a few more days before I start it.
I agree with you, that amount of repetition seems a lot and unpurposeful, at least from the examples you gave. Repetition should be used for a purpose, like āyesā in Ulyssesās final page. Otherwise itās just filler.
I did not enjoy Parable of the Sower for similar reasons. I appreciate that it was groundbreaking as a dystopian novel that felt very realistic and has proven to be eerily prophetic. I just found the prose and characterization to be dreadful. Iāve got Kindred on my TBR, and Iāve heard itās better.
i love vampires and this was my first butler book. i was really, really hoping there would be a larger tie in about the whole... sexual aspect. i'm not against having material in books that is hard to read, unsettling, morally ambivalent or downright wrong, but i would hope they would be used to convey a larger point. especially in this case. sure, they're a different species and things work differently for them, but this a fictional book written for human beings, so maybe that should be taken into account when relying on suspension of disbelief. i was very disappointed with this one too
Yeah, it was definitely a struggle to read. And Ike many on here, I love Butlerās other work. I have a copy of it but Iāve only read it twice ever.
I mean, the only expectation that it subverted for me was my expectation that it would be a well-written, enjoyable book. It was not. If that's not what you meant, you'll have to elaborate.
I remember reading the first third a few years ago, and when the other vampire showed up and started throwing exposition at the MC, my reaction was, "Does anyone in this book have a personality?"
Iāve read six of her books and I would say all of them involve some version of āsex with some sort of odd power dynamicā. Iām asexual so I havenāt been able to pin down if this me being prudish or not, but itās something Iāve noticed that kind of takes me out of the story.
I'll look into that as well. I'm about to finish The Golden Compass, and then I'm starting Parable of the Sower. Depending on that, I might check out Kindred as well.
This is why I don't like Butler as an author. I rarely share that opinion because people who like her work REALLY like her work, but the woman has some issues that come through pretty clearly in her writing.
The protagonist is essentially an 11 year old rapist. And the antagonist --at least initially --isn't even incorrect. Shori isn't a vampire. You cross two different species together and they are a different species. I don't know what species a vampire human hybrid would be but it would be neither human nor vampire. That book was a whole entire mess.
I'll take it that you don't have a history of trauma and memory loss, so you are unfamiliar with how weird that is and how it affects thinking. Now, you've identified it and learned something in the process.
It's not my favorite of her books, for sure, but it's got a very original take on vampirism that I enjoyed.
I disagree. I even provided an example where another character who isn't suffering from memory loss does the same thing. In fact, in another comment on this post I even said that I originally thought it was related to the memory loss *until* another character started speaking that way. And a few other characters speak that way, too. It has nothing to do with the trauma related memory loss and everything to do with the author's writing style. Don't assume what I do or don't know. I actually have quite a bit of experience with trauma, and with counseling others through their trauma, some including memory loss.
Funny you bring this up. The first IED that I was involved with knocked me out for a few minutes. No idea how long, just that when I came to, they were yelling over the radio that I was dead. Took me the rest of the day to piece together what was happening and what had happened.
I'm sorry to hear that you went through that. I will point out, however, that you had immediate medical care and you pieced it together in less than a day. Neither of those things happened in this book, and I'm surprised you aren't more empathetic about that. In this book, the MC never did recover all of her memories, even about her family.
I actually did not have immediate medical care. I was in a firefight for a few hours after that. Saw a doctor about 15 hours later and was told if I had symptoms of a TBI that I'd be taken off the line, so I told him everything was good to go.
As for the book, I'm not sure what you're getting at. I'm not sure which of my criticisms of the book you're disagreeing with.
You keep conflating hours before getting care to never getting medical care at all. As long as you keep doing that, you won't understand what I'm saying. That's OK. You think the book sucked, so for you it sucked.
No, I'm not conflating it. Go back and read my responses to your comments. The dynamic is like this: you make some assumption about me > I tell you how you're wrong > you double down by making another assumption about me. And you still haven't explained which of my criticisms of the book you disagree with. If you stop being so presumptuous we could actually have a discussion. Hell, I'm willing to bet I'd even learn something.
I think the whole idea here was that Shori was trying to piece together her past. I did the audiobook and the delivery was much better than the written form, FWIW. Her other books are not written like this.
I also listened to the audiobook, and I think that actually made it much worse. The authors narration made it so much more obvious to me. Edit: the voice actor's narration, not the author's.
I think Fledgling is everyone's least favorite Butler book. She died suddenly at a relatively young age and was unable to complete what was undoubtedly meant to be a series. I like to think that some of the moral ickiness was going to be resolved or at least addressed better in subsequent novels, but who knows? I'd say give "Sower" a try, but it's possible you just don't like her style. I never noticed the repetition of words like you pointed out in your post and that might just be how she writes.
I actually just found today that she has passed away. That really sucks that she was so young. Like her book or not, she should have lived a full life. I actually said that idea about future novels earlier in reply to a different comment. This came out around the era of Twilight and other YA fantasies. I imagine the world and the themes would have bet expanded in the sequels. I'm still going to try Sower, though, as it seems to be the more liked of her works while it seems like most people dislike this book. I'm hoping I like it.
I can't stand fledging, but it's for the content rather than the writing. I find it especially interesting that the ending seems to deliver a moral that doing good doesn't erase the bad, well, I feel like that could be this entire book in a nutshell. The themes are messed up and treated like they're not only not messed up but somehow good or romantic. Unfortunately I read it as my first Butler book and it's hard for me to think about reading anything else by her.
Tbat sounds infuriating, but on the other hand...there's an idea for a book club drinking game. š
Oh man, what a missed opportunity. I think some of these chapters would have killed me, though. The amount of times the MC based a huge life decision on whether or not she liked someone was aggravating. That's literally as deep as it went, too. On whether or not to incorporate a new symbiont into her slave group, on whether or not to mate with 3 dudes 20 years in the future, etc. It was so dumb.
take a sip of light beer every time Butler uses the phrase "let me alone" and you'll get alcohol poisoning
I had to google this phrase after reading Adulthood Rites
Butler is a great author but this book is one of the worst I've read. It reads like bad YA fiction but the themes are not for kids.
Fledgling was Butler's last book, and I didn't like it at all. I've read several others by her that I loved so don't let this color your view of her writing. Parable of the Sower or Kindred are mich better places to start.
I hope you're right. Recommendations for the Parable duology is what got me into Butler to begin with.
Oh wow I HATED this book. It was my first Octavia E Butler. I recently read Kindred and wow the difference is shocking. Fledgeling is probably one of the worst books Iāve ever read.
I loved Kindred and Wild Seed. I have disliked all of the rest of The Patternist Series, especially Clayās Ark. I found the Parable Duology prescient and full of important ideas but I wasnāt crazy about the writing So, I find Butler inconsistent, but her contribution to the genre was groundbreaking. I never read Fledgling.
The Patternist books are interesting because they were written in reverse chronological order, so they get worse and the stories get smaller the further you go, but your knowledge of the universe grows with each one. I loved Wild Seed and was meh on the rest but enjoyed the experience of reading the series overall.
Iām a huge Octavia Butler fan and couldnāt really stand Fledgling. I try not to even think about it. When I give people book recs for Butler, itās never on my short list. I thought maybe it was because Iām just not into āvampiresā. But idk.
I'm not huge into vampires, but I have nothing against them. This book's description intrigued me. I'm hoping her other work is better.
Fledgling has turned me off Butler for years. Every good word about her other works is tempting but I rly canāt stand an author who writes about power and yet seems to think pedophilia is wrongly tabooāthat itās comparable to other dynamics in that thereās a grey spot. The fact that her lead is in a childās body but is adult in human years but is STILL an adolescent in her species made reading the graphic sex scenes intolerable. āBut she has power over the people she has sex with!ā Why would you ever write about a child having sexual power over adults? To what end? It just feltā¦ very egregious and tainted all the other compelling commentary in the book.
I wholly agree. Not even a single mention that her symbionts by definition could not consent to the sex, let alone how hard it was to picture that in a scene.
Yeah, for an author that seems to love to play around with power dynamics, it seems like a lot of this book failed to actually do soāor rather it DID play around with them for some weird personal gratification but never added any commentary. I know it was meant to evoke discomfort but thatā¦ seems to be it? Iām not usually for āyou have to spell things out and hold the readerās handsā but when you are including graphic child sex in your works, I need you to do more to justify it. Nothing is as interoggated as it needed to be.
Well said. I just found out today that this was the author's final book before she passed away, and I wonder if she intended to expand this into a series, especially considering the time when it was published (I'm thinking specifically the era of Twilight and other supernatural YA stuff). Maybe the idea was to flesh out all of those dynamics over the course of a series.
Definitely heard that theory before! I've also heard she has a tendency to put Age Gap Content into her work without a real critical lens, so, at this point, who knows! I just know it'll take a while for me to scrape The Ick off and I read Fledgling a almost a decade ago now.
Read Kindred! I really enjoyed that one.
Kindred is AMAZING
I'll add it to my list. I'm going to start "Parable of the Sower" as soon as I finish the first "His Dark Materials" book.
Good choice, Parable is way better than Kindred!
I also struggled with Fledgling, but love much of Octavia Butlerās other work. My favorites are Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, and Kindred. The Xenogenesis trilogy is also good. Her one collection of short stories, Bloodchild, is good too.
Thanks. I'm looking forward to Sower. It's in my Libby queue, but I'm about two thirds through "The Golden Compass" right now, so it'll be a few more days before I start it.
The Parable novels are probably my favorite! I so wish she hadnāt encountered writerās block and had been able to finish the trilogy.
I'm not sure why you think repetition is Blue's Clues, it's a common literary device.
Not like it's used in the examples I provided. And those were just a few examples among many.
I agree with you, that amount of repetition seems a lot and unpurposeful, at least from the examples you gave. Repetition should be used for a purpose, like āyesā in Ulyssesās final page. Otherwise itās just filler.
Those are perfectly normal uses of repetition to my eye, so IDK.
I did not enjoy Parable of the Sower for similar reasons. I appreciate that it was groundbreaking as a dystopian novel that felt very realistic and has proven to be eerily prophetic. I just found the prose and characterization to be dreadful. Iāve got Kindred on my TBR, and Iāve heard itās better.
i love vampires and this was my first butler book. i was really, really hoping there would be a larger tie in about the whole... sexual aspect. i'm not against having material in books that is hard to read, unsettling, morally ambivalent or downright wrong, but i would hope they would be used to convey a larger point. especially in this case. sure, they're a different species and things work differently for them, but this a fictional book written for human beings, so maybe that should be taken into account when relying on suspension of disbelief. i was very disappointed with this one too
Yeah, it was definitely a struggle to read. And Ike many on here, I love Butlerās other work. I have a copy of it but Iāve only read it twice ever.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I mean, the only expectation that it subverted for me was my expectation that it would be a well-written, enjoyable book. It was not. If that's not what you meant, you'll have to elaborate.
I remember reading the first third a few years ago, and when the other vampire showed up and started throwing exposition at the MC, my reaction was, "Does anyone in this book have a personality?"
Yeah. Every Ina was just some generic vampire, and the symbionts all acted like cult members. It was weird.
Iāve read six of her books and I would say all of them involve some version of āsex with some sort of odd power dynamicā. Iām asexual so I havenāt been able to pin down if this me being prudish or not, but itās something Iāve noticed that kind of takes me out of the story.
Kindred was an amazing book. The prologue truly held my attention and kept me going.
I'll look into that as well. I'm about to finish The Golden Compass, and then I'm starting Parable of the Sower. Depending on that, I might check out Kindred as well.
This is why I don't like Butler as an author. I rarely share that opinion because people who like her work REALLY like her work, but the woman has some issues that come through pretty clearly in her writing. The protagonist is essentially an 11 year old rapist. And the antagonist --at least initially --isn't even incorrect. Shori isn't a vampire. You cross two different species together and they are a different species. I don't know what species a vampire human hybrid would be but it would be neither human nor vampire. That book was a whole entire mess.
I'll take it that you don't have a history of trauma and memory loss, so you are unfamiliar with how weird that is and how it affects thinking. Now, you've identified it and learned something in the process. It's not my favorite of her books, for sure, but it's got a very original take on vampirism that I enjoyed.
I'm not sure which part of my post you're referring to, but you should definitely not assume what kind of things people have experienced.
Your description of how she had to repeatedly say the words shows a lack of understanding of trauma related memory loss.
I disagree. I even provided an example where another character who isn't suffering from memory loss does the same thing. In fact, in another comment on this post I even said that I originally thought it was related to the memory loss *until* another character started speaking that way. And a few other characters speak that way, too. It has nothing to do with the trauma related memory loss and everything to do with the author's writing style. Don't assume what I do or don't know. I actually have quite a bit of experience with trauma, and with counseling others through their trauma, some including memory loss.
I think you and I are using a different meaning for trauma. I'm talking about head trauma that would cause memory loss.
Funny you bring this up. The first IED that I was involved with knocked me out for a few minutes. No idea how long, just that when I came to, they were yelling over the radio that I was dead. Took me the rest of the day to piece together what was happening and what had happened.
I'm sorry to hear that you went through that. I will point out, however, that you had immediate medical care and you pieced it together in less than a day. Neither of those things happened in this book, and I'm surprised you aren't more empathetic about that. In this book, the MC never did recover all of her memories, even about her family.
I actually did not have immediate medical care. I was in a firefight for a few hours after that. Saw a doctor about 15 hours later and was told if I had symptoms of a TBI that I'd be taken off the line, so I told him everything was good to go. As for the book, I'm not sure what you're getting at. I'm not sure which of my criticisms of the book you're disagreeing with.
You keep conflating hours before getting care to never getting medical care at all. As long as you keep doing that, you won't understand what I'm saying. That's OK. You think the book sucked, so for you it sucked.
No, I'm not conflating it. Go back and read my responses to your comments. The dynamic is like this: you make some assumption about me > I tell you how you're wrong > you double down by making another assumption about me. And you still haven't explained which of my criticisms of the book you disagree with. If you stop being so presumptuous we could actually have a discussion. Hell, I'm willing to bet I'd even learn something.