Fledgling

This is a good first book to what could have been a great series, but it devolves from an interesting take on the vampire myth (a take which includes class and race in a way that so-called genre fiction so often doesn't) with an interesting central narrator to a mild courtroom drama, oddly enough. I love Butler, but this story feels like an introduction to a larger tale, one that doesn't quite stand on its own. It is still worth reading for the interesting vampire dynamics that Butler has created, but ultimately a little disappointing.

I think this is my last (major) Butler book, having read all the others in the Canon. As usual we have a simmering stew full of questions and uncomfortable ideas about consent, power, compulsion, free will, imaginative family structure, justice, what it means to be human, etc. The world building about the vampire race was fun; the driving antagonistic force was not super complex but felt believable. The problem is it's really hard to get past the creepy creepy terrible sex scenes with the main character who is a child. I get that Butler is often trying to transgress in terms of sexual dynamics and ethics in her books, given that so many of her protagonists are young women and teens who enter sexual relationships with men much older than them, but uh, this was pretty bad even knowing that.

read for blackoween 2022: a backlist book & murder mystery

i really enjoyed the writing of this book and the story. the way it combines sci-fi and paranormal elements to make a story that is interesting, unique, and important. i love sci-fi thrillers/horror so much and i also love paranormal elements but i think this takes an impressive amount of skill to ciming them into a seamless story. But i simply was super uncomfy that the main character presents as a child and has sexual relations with adults. ik that it's meant to have a purpose but i have to take off a star for it. 

Unfortunately I really wasn't a fan of Fledgling. The plot meandered around and never quite found its footing. I couldn't have been less interested in the final direction Butler took the story. I also wasn't really able to get past the ick factor, so it set my entire reading experience on the wrong foot and clouded everything else. I thought it was a unique take on vampires, but that's where the strengths end for me.

This should have been a really interesting exploration of racism (given that the protagonist is a vampire who has been genetically modified to have dark skin and some other vampires hate her for it) but it read like really fluffy YA fiction following the adventures of an amnesiac Mary Sue whom everyone who isn't racist falls in love with. And the prejudice is confined to a small subset of traditionalist sticks-in-the-mud while everyone else is “good” which, yeah, that's exactly how racism works.

This could have included an interesting exploration of bisexuality (given that the vampires build “harems” that include both male and female humans) but the focus remains firmly on the male-female pairings (the main character has to find a vampire husband, her male human “first” is mostly okay with sharing her but only with women, humans bound to vampires of the same sex explain their fate is okay because they still get to have sexy times with opposite sex humans).

I expected an interesting exploration of gender (given what I had heard about the author going into the book) but it turns out vampires are matriarchal because female vampires are more biologically powerful (because they are “sexier”). That's it. It veers awfully close to gender essentialism.

On top of all this, let's throw in a bunch of sex scenes between a prepubescent vampire girl who looks about ten (but it's okay because ten in vampire years is 50 in human years) and a twenty five year old hairy man who literally can't stop himself because she's sooooo seductive (because she has the strongest vampire sexy powers ever and even her dad and brothers have a hard time controlling themselves around her).

So, at this point I can confidently say I love Octavia Butler's writing style. A lot. No matter how strange the plot seems to me I am hooked. This book was a journey that I loved taking and I was into it really quickly. Star only knocked off because I think the ending didn't tie up enough for me but this is true for every book I have read by this author so at this point you'd think I'd be used to it but I'm not.

A paranormal/sci fi story about a vampire with amnesia. Definitely worth picking up.

I put off reading this for a long time because it was the only Octavia Butler book I had left to read, and it's really sad to live in a world where I will never get to read one of her works for the first time. This one was not my favorite of hers, but I really enjoyed reading it. After a few books that felt rather sloggy, the refreshing pacing and tension of a Butler novel were much needed. It's a vampire story, but not like any you've read about before and definitely pulls in themes from the Lilith trilogy and the Parables as far as found families and what is really important in life. I enjoyed it as I've enjoyed everything she has ever written.

[2.75] So when I was in the 7th Grade I had a really laid back English teacher, probably a little too laid back, and she would periodically tell us about what books she was reading. It was her way of encouraging students to be interested in reading and to socialize with her students. One of those books she told us about was this book called “Fledgling.” She explained that it was a vampire book, and it being the height of the “Twilight” books and movies this interested a lot of students. She had to quickly explain that this probably wasn't a book for kids our age. Now nearly a decade later, I see why she added that disclaimer. In retrospect, I now realize she probably shouldn't have brought the book up at all to the class, it's got quite a bit of descriptive violence and sexual content. And it's that sexual content that makes me deeply uncomfortable even now as an adult.

In the story, our main character is a young girl of 10 or 11 (it's been a couple weeks since I actually read it so I don't remember exactly) who wakes in a cave, badly injured and with no memories of who or where she is. She eventually finds herself walking on a road where a man in his 20s picks her up. This man is almost immediately infatuated with her and she with him, and they start a relationship...with sex (and bloodsucking). Yes, you heard me; a 20+ year old character and a ~10 year old character have sex in this book. Through the course of the narrative we later learn that she's actually 50+ years old but because vampires age differently she looks 10 by human standards, but still it's a 10 year old's body! I could not get past that element of the story, and it happens a lot, because vampires in this world essentially create a personal harem of humans to drink from and have sex with. It's really fucking gross and a big reason why I'm marking it lower despite some other interesting themes of race and belonging.

Short Review: - A very different vampire novel. The novel opens with a very young vampire that has been seriously injured and has no memory. These vampires are not changed humans but an entirely different species. The best part of the novel is the discovery of the new culture and rules of the this vampire world. In many ways it feels like a set up to a series, but Butler passed away a year after the novel was published.

The full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/fledgling/