Dawn

💬: “You don’t look that threatening. Just … very different.”

“Different is threatening to most species,” Nikanj answered. “Different is dangerous. It might kill you. That was true to your animal ancestors and your nearest animal relatives. And it’s true for you.”

Butler, Octavia E.. Dawn (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 1) (p. 211). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.

📖Genres: sci-fi, dystopia, post-apocalyptic, aliens, horror, speculative fiction

📚Page Count: 248

🎧Audiobook Length: 09h 20min

👩🏾‍🏫My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 - 4.5/5

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Dawn by Octavia E. Butler is my first finished read of 2023! It was my first time reading this piece of work, and I really enjoyed it.

I have a phobia of aliens, which I've mentioned in the past. I was very creeped out going into this book, but I couldn't put the book down once I started (I finished it in two days!)

This book explores themes of gender, society, humanity - and what that means, sexuality, and I'm sure I'm missing some.

I enjoyed the world building. <spoiler>The aliens and the ship were all so creatively designed.</spoiler> This story just had so many great working parts, and it all came together to make a creepy but wonderfully written story.

I knocked off .5 stars because of how heteronormative the story was, with all the males trying to find a female within their groups to "hook up" with. Someone pointed out that was a unrealistic that everyone was so heteronormative, and I agree

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4.5/5 Stars

4.5/5 rating, rounded down.

I've had this on my TBR list for a long time, but it unfortunately kept getting buried by other books. I finally took some time to read it.

What a ride!

Enjoying this book is the same way you might enjoy something like a rigorous hike. This isn't an easy, fun read. This isn't a story of some wacky aliens and a human who tries to be friends with them. Dawn by Octavia E. Butler is a deep, intriguing, and unsettling read. The story discusses the nature of consent, reproductive agency, gender roles, community and identity, human nature, eugenics, and the ethics of assimilation. But Butler doesn't answer any questions about any of these subjects in her book. She explores them.

The premise is as follows: Lillith Ayapo is a human woman who lived on Earth right up until its destruction by nuclear war. But she did not die. Instead, she was saved alongside a handful of humanity by aliens known as the Oankali. The Oankali are a spacefaring race with three sexes: male, female, and ooloi. All three are needed for reproduction, and their social structure is shaped by the presence of these three sexes. The question quickly emerges: why did the Oankali rescue the humans? Out of the kindness of their hearts? As it turns out, the Oankali do want something from the humans: they want to breed with the humans and exchange genetic information.

There's so much to unwrap to this story. It would take so much time to discuss and go through every subject that I mentioned before! So, to keep it concise and spoiler-free, I will say that one of my absolute favorite things about this book is the depth in which Butler crafts each ethical issue. Obviously, most of us look at our current human history and say the following basic statements without much hesitation: colonization is bad, eugenics is bad, and consent is good. In Dawn, the same scenarios are presented but in a much more ambiguous way. Butler doesn't portray any parties in the book as the “good guys” or the “bad guys.” There are many layers to every issue presented in the book, nothing is presented as shallow. There's no spoon-feeding of one-dimensional issues and villains.

Lillith too, is the same way. I've seen so many debates on her actions, how ethical they are, what would be the right thing to do in her shoes. But the way I see it...is there a right answer to this whole scenario? There's a very poignant issue of power balance between the humans and Oankali, one that Lillith finds herself right in the middle of. How much agency does she truly have in the role she's picked to play?

The questions of assimilation and consent in this novel are built so they do not have easy answers and everyone will take away their individual thoughts. The book is, essentially, your springboard. One of my favorite things is going online and seeing people have such widespread opinions on the morality of the Oankali and the situation the humans find themselves in.

The world and situation itself are interesting to read. It's a unique exploration of two common subjects in speculative fiction–the destruction of Earth and first contact. The way Butler describes the visceral reaction of Lillith to the Oankali is vivid. The aliens themselves have a touch of body horror to them in how, well, alien they are to us. The way they talk, the way they approach interaction with humans...it's a fascinating deep-dive without becoming a boring information dump. The stark, alien world that Butler creates for us makes the experience for the humans even more impressionable to me. I was feeling the same sense of awe and fear that the main characters felt.

There are scenes that were uncomfortable to read, that gave me uneasy knots in my stomach. But they only added to the experience of this story. It is a horrifying situation that the humans find themselves in, and things transpire that are shocking to read. Some of my all-time favorite fantasy and science fiction stories are the ones we can use as a reflection of our state of being.

The ending was quite abrupt to me, but honestly, I feel like that's my main complaint with 99% of the books I read. But I get it, the story moves forward. There's more to read about and see how things progress.

All in all, a very fascinating book. Honestly, the reason why I'm rounding down the rating instead of rounding it up to a 5 is that this is not a book that I will probably go back and re-read frequently. But you know what? This is definitely a novel that will stick with me.

I found a recommendation for this book on a list of horror novels to read. I've always kind of been in awe of Butler, I remember reading Kindred in a stunned sort of trance-like manner. She's was a literary goddess, truly. Dawn belongs on horror recommendation lists. The entire point of this novel is the very frightening idea that, if there was no other choice, how much humanity could humans give up and still be human?
But, that's not the scary part. Oh, no.
For me, I found the isolation that Lilith endures to be awe inspiring terrifying. She is not only isolated in a room on a ship with a completely alien species, she is later forced into a leadership position of training fellow humans for a return to earth. But the humans are not going back alone or unaltered. I can't say more without giving away plot points, except poor, poor Lilith.
This is in every way a horrifying story of the future of humanity, and one I would never want to have to live through.