Dawn

When I began this book I thought it would be more challenging to read. I haven't read much sci-fi from the 70s and 80s, but the stuff I have read has a particular stilted flair to it. They are often stories more interested in discussing philosophy and the failures of humanity than telling a compelling narrative that people can see themselves in. But once I was past the first or second chapters, this story moved. Octavia Butler's prose is graceful and swift, and Lilith....Lilith is the best.

The world has ended. Humanity has finally gone and done it and blown themselves up, and suddenly Lilith Iyapo is on a spaceship somewhere just past the moon. Her captors are humanoid but hideous, compassionate but very manipulative. They want to give humanity another shot, and in doing that they will change themselves and humans forever. Lilith is educated in the aliens' ways, changed to suit their purposes, and tasked with choosing and preparing a group of humans to return to Earth. You know, if they don't kill themselves or her first.

I was blown away by how real this felt. Lilith responds to her impossible situation in much the same I feel like I would. She's curious and practical, but deeply frustrated all the time. Can you imagine trying to talk sense into forty people who have been abducted by aliens, and are hellbent on not being sensible? Would you support an alien race in rebuilding humanity if it meant giving up your own humanity, and that of your future children? Lilith does absolutely the best she freaking can, and I would move mountains for this woman, I swear. She shoots straight, whether she's talking to Oankali or other humans. The Oankali have very distinct personalities too, and the friction that occurs between Lilith and her adoptive alien families provides for not just conflict but a lot of humor.

This book also triggers my chuck-things-through-windows reflex. I hate Lord of the Flies-style set ups, I can't stand stories that assume that when the chips are down we revert to our worst state. Thankfully, as long as Lilith was holding things together, I was too, but when things got bad towards the end, the danger of her situation began to effect me on a core level. And it makes me wonder - would humans only become better if we're made, biologically and genetically, into something else? Are we - as the Oankali suggest - inherently flawed? It's interesting, I brought this premise up to my writing group, Butler's idea that humanity's biggest self-destructive flaw is our compulsion towards hierarchy. Two people responded saying that is interesting to suggest that something that has fueled our evolution - competition - would also bring our destruction. I found it strange that they think competition and hierarchy is necessary at all for humans to be who and what they are. It was a tad worrying, to be honest.

I could talk a lot about the sociological and philosophical implications of this story. I will say that though I was extremely impressed by how progressive and sophisticated this book is, I was bothered that it was still very heteronormative. I mean, we have aliens with three genders for crying out loud, and yet there was this assumption that all the people in the group would pair along heterosexual lines. Granted, you could explain it as they were selected by the Oankali to be that way, but in a group of forty people you're going to have some gay people, regardless of whether they were out or having relationships with people of the same gender before they got kidnapped. In most books, I wouldn't point this out, but Butler is clearly smart and knows what she's doing, this should not be a blind spot for her. Maybe it'll be addressed later in the series, when the new humanity evolves further. Personally speaking, I definitely want to know how queer people fit into this new world.

Overall, this book is amazing and frustrating and eye-opening. It was particularly so for me right now, as I'm watching the news and wondering if there is much that we can be hopeful for about our future. Our worst habits as humans are culminating in their inevitable conclusion, and I don't think there are any aliens out there ready to give us a second chance. But if there were - would we even take it? Would we even know how?

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.

This is a hard book to rate for me.

I loved the first half. It incrementally builds out a very interesting world filled with neat sci-fi concepts, exploring lots of interesting ideas. Meanwhile, it gives us lots of time to get to know our main character, how she thinks, and the characters around her. The characters, sci-fi concepts, and philosophical musings make this section of the book a fantastic read.

In the second half, once she starts waking other humans up, it became much less interesting to me. The cast of characters grows so quickly that (understandably) few are given much page time to understand them. But either because of the size of the cast, or for other reasons, the other humans all fell flat for me - 1-dimensional and uninteresting. Even our main character gets less interesting, as we have less time with her thoughts, so her actions start to feel less realistic, less relatable. Meanwhile, a bland political plot unfolds with a bland romantic sub-plot. Lacking compelling plot or characters by the end, I was ready for it to be done and left disappointed. 

Having read [b:Kindred 60931 Kindred Octavia E. Butler https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1339423248s/60931.jpg 1049657] and [b:Bloodchild and Other Stories 60930 Bloodchild and Other Stories Octavia E. Butler https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1428806161s/60930.jpg 1188455], I can see that Butler has some favorite themes - slavery, captivity, collaboration, survival, identity, rape, sex, procreation, civilization. She plays with these concepts as usual, leaving the reader little refuge in black and white morality. I only wish the characters in this story felt a little more three-dimensional. The captors have an inscrutability that's quite logical within the story, but even they felt more fleshed-out than many of the humans. This is the first failure I've seen from Butler - she seems barely able to imagine a human reaction beyond Lilith's sympathetic (but oh-so-serious) stoicism, or its foil, violent anger. Rather than being told the characteristics of the new humans through literal dossiers, I would have liked to discover their personalities through their reactions and relationships. Surely some people would have coped through dark humor and sarcasm (Eddie Dean, this story needs you!), total denial, breaking down, lashing out verbally, isolating themselves, fearing to be alone, obsessively planning escape, obsequious cooperation with the captors, and so on. But all we really see is the smart, calm people who all echo Lilith, and the angry rabble-rousers who lead or follow in pointless violence.I feel like I'm dwelling too much on the negative - I think it's just because I've seen this author do better with similar material. This definitely deserves four stars, and was a totally gripping read. It made me grateful for a 3-hour plane ride because I got to keep reading! Lilith is smart and sympathetic, but she's flawed and unsure sometimes, and she's a fully realized character. Sometimes her relationships with Oankali brought me to tears. Even when their motives are utterly alien, these folk can win our hearts - and that is as good a summation of the story's themes as I can give.

One of the best books I've ever read.

I was utterly engaged from the beginning. Lilith's journey is fascinating and is served by clutterless prose.

This might be the densest “interesting ideas per page” sci fi novel I've encountered. This has one of the best and most interesting depictions of alien life. The position Lilith finds herself in, relative to the extraterrestrials, allows for all sorts of interesting examinations of not just human behavior and tendencies but also the definition of “human” and how flexible that might be.

Masterpiece.

My first Octavia Butler and I can see what the fuss is about. The book is huge in Scope (Sapiens' survival and continuity) but very small in structure (the Alien ship) and Butler has kept part 1 essential and this lack of information about the aliens actually keeps it focused. All I know is that as I grow older and lived through the clusterfuckery that is people's response to COVID is that we simply do not deserve any Alien who actually wants to keep us alive, whatever their ulterior motive might be...

You know the problem with this book? You buy it on your Nook and it says “270 pages” and you trust that and get to page 230 and think you have 40 pages left and then all of a sudden you don't because the last 40 pages are a preview of the next book and the book is over and you weren't ready for it!

This is one of the best books I have ever read. It's the kind of book I have dreamed of writing. It is smart, thoughtful, and beautiful. It is disturbing and familiar, thorough and concise, human and alien. I don't have the words to properly review the book. I immediately went and ordered the rest of the Xenogenesis series in paper because this is one of those I'm just going to want to have around. Brilliant.

This book was recommended by a podcast I heard. The premise is compelling enough. I found myself unmoved by the characters and ultimately lost interest. I finished the book but had no interest in continuing. Much of what the book was praised for was not targeted at me so I get it. Not bad, but not my favorite.

The good: very good, straightforward easy to read story. Excellent description of what it feels like to be a slave/pet, an inferior people (technologically and maybe also ethically), a “tolerated” different race, a woman. Very good anthropological POV of discovering a different society and civilization as an outsider, even if welcomed (but still an alien). Excellent description of the dilemma for collaborators with a benevolent occuppant (but still an invader): should we trade our violent, murdereous freedom for a better, but less free future?
The bad (therefore not 5/5): a TOO straightforward easy to read story. Meaning it only deals with the human MC POV and completely lacking any social depth for the aliens (no history, religion, beliefs, plots, different parties). It feels like Shogun without the intrigues and civil war, just with the love story and the adaptation to social rules.
Still, overall a very good book, I will start book 2 right away. This one reminded me strongly of Ender, but without the war, just the relentless training and the social ejection by his/here her peers.

Dawn is the first book in the Xenogenesis Trilogy. Humanity has nearly destroyed itself and the Earth, with the remaining survivors placed in suspended animation by the Oankali. The main character in this story is Lilith, a woman who is awaked by the alien race and chosen to be the leader who will help humanity re-colonize the Earth. Except that in exchange for saving human-kind, the Oankali want to change it forever.

Butler excels at using the possibilities of science fiction to create a poignant commentary on issues of race, gender, and power in both modern and historical societies. This book provides a fascinating look at how humans exist, interact, and develop societies, as well as how behaviors can change when one is faced with challenges as an individual versus when the challenge is presented to a larger group.

I have to say that I really enjoyed reading this book. There isn't much to discuss in terms of plot (one can only go so far when being held captive on a spaceship), so much of the book was Lilith thinking about things and assessing her situation. Although I found Lilith to be a compelling character, my one complaint is that the rest of the human cast felt much more stereotypical and not as as well-rounded. Granted, we didn't get any points of view from their perspective, so we can't know everything they were thinking, but for the most part everyone did the things that the reader could have predicted that they would do. Which does make them consistent, but it also makes them boring.

I feel as though this book gives the reader enough closure that they don't need to read the other books in the trilogy, however, I also think this book is good enough that the other stories should be given a chance and I plan to read them sometime in the future. Actually, this book was good enough that I want to find even more of Butler's works. She is a fantastic writer and I really need to read more of her stories.

I really wanted to love this book, and I did at first, but I was let down in the end. Lilith is such a cool character and a part of me wants to find out what happens to her, but damn that ending. I felt the same way while reading the Pern series–can't they just get rid of that thread!?! It's frustrating, and not in a good way. Maybe I'm just too used to neat endings, but I honestly don't think that's it...Tigana ended in a cliff hanger (and there is no sequel to that book, but I still loved it!) I guess I just felt cheated while reading Dawn. For me, this story was built up to have this resolution, and then there isn't any! I don't know... maybe I'll pick this series back up in a few years, but for now it's just not my cup of tea. That being said, the storytelling is top notch and I thought it was very original (plus, I was really missing the whole science fiction because I've been reading a lot of fantasy). So overall, not a bad read.

3 out of 5 stars

Executive Summary: A well written and very different story that just made me uncomfortable the whole time. It wasn't exactly my type of book, but it may be yours.

Full Review
These sorts of reviews are the hardest to write. For books I love, the reviews usually come pretty easily. For books I don't, I try to express why I didn't like the book without ranting about it and then move on and don't worry too much about the quality of the review.

This book falls somewhere in between. It really made me feel uncomfortable the entire time. I'm sure that was the point. Not only the way the Oankali treated Lilith, but the way the other humans treat her.

The story was interesting and certainly made me think a lot more than most of the books I usually read. Not only is it well written, but Ms. Butler somehow packs a whole lot of story and ideas into such a short book without making it feel rushed or incomplete.

She's obviously a great writer. That said that level of discomfort is not something I enjoyed, and I read for enjoyment. I kind of want to see where this story goes next, but I'm still not sure if I'll continue on with the series or not.

That said, I'm glad I finally read a book by Ms. Butler and may try another of her books in the future if I don't decide to continue on to the next in this series. From the sounds of it though, working these sort of issues of discrimination and subjugation is a common thing for her work, so she simply may not be an author for me.

If you like books that challenge you to think though, this may be a great choice for you.

The book is brilliantly written—the kind you don't want to put down.

The entire process of a post-apocalyptic world where Aliens have captured remaining humans is described so well that it keeps you hooked till the end.

Humans really come out badly in comparison to aliens in this and I appreciate Octavia E. Butler's understanding of human psychology, and how selfish and unpredictable humans are.

Overall this book sets you up nicely for the trilogy. It ends on a note that builds great excitement for future books. I am excited to read further to understand what happens next.

Book Review: Dawn by Octavia Butler (Exenogenesis Trilogy #1) - The always interesting writing of Octavia Butler goes to Alien abduction. Earth has nearly destroyed all the humans. Aliens are trying to help the humans re-establish new settlements on Earth, or at least that is what they say they are doing.

As with Butler's other books, the main character is a strong African American Female that is well developed as a character. And this is a book about ideas, not just action. So the themes of what it means to be human, what you can do to survive, what it means to work with an enemy are all present.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/dawn/