LordBalthazar
May 30th, 2007, 01:38 PM
I was introduced to the works of Octavia E. Butler through this forum's book club. I read Parable of the Sower and found it to be a depressing but ultimately uplifting work. Butler does a wonderful job of creating a believable and very sympathetic protagonist, a strong female who manages to persevere in spite of the odds stacked against her.
Parable of the Talents picks up where Sower leaves off, with Oya having successfully settled down with Bankole and created that Earthseed community she so wanted. Of course, it's only a matter of time before the grim reality of the degraded American society intrudes and ultimately destroys this dream.
I enjoyed this book as much as the first although I did find it unrelentingly dark. While, in Sower, Oya (and, by extension the reader) at least held out the hope of her dream, in Talents hope is initially destroyed by the destruction of the Earthseed community. And even as Oya struggles through her captivity and eventually wins her freedom, what sense of hope is undercut by the book's second narrator, Oya's long-lost daughter, who very early on informs the reader that a) her mother is dead and b) she clearly has issues with her mother.
As much as I hated the CA thugs, they were fairly standard two-dimensional villains and didn't provoke the strong antipathy I felt for Marcus, a presumably moral man who owes his life and freedom to his sister, yet essentially steals her daughter from her.
I liked this book a lot but it wasn't as satisfying as Sower. Despite the sense of hope at novel's end - as Earthseed finally reaches the stars - any positive feelings are overshadowed by the fact that Oya's daughter can't see reason enough to re-establish a relationship with mother (instead choosing to return to someone who lied to her).
Great but incredibly depressing.
Parable of the Talents picks up where Sower leaves off, with Oya having successfully settled down with Bankole and created that Earthseed community she so wanted. Of course, it's only a matter of time before the grim reality of the degraded American society intrudes and ultimately destroys this dream.
I enjoyed this book as much as the first although I did find it unrelentingly dark. While, in Sower, Oya (and, by extension the reader) at least held out the hope of her dream, in Talents hope is initially destroyed by the destruction of the Earthseed community. And even as Oya struggles through her captivity and eventually wins her freedom, what sense of hope is undercut by the book's second narrator, Oya's long-lost daughter, who very early on informs the reader that a) her mother is dead and b) she clearly has issues with her mother.
As much as I hated the CA thugs, they were fairly standard two-dimensional villains and didn't provoke the strong antipathy I felt for Marcus, a presumably moral man who owes his life and freedom to his sister, yet essentially steals her daughter from her.
I liked this book a lot but it wasn't as satisfying as Sower. Despite the sense of hope at novel's end - as Earthseed finally reaches the stars - any positive feelings are overshadowed by the fact that Oya's daughter can't see reason enough to re-establish a relationship with mother (instead choosing to return to someone who lied to her).
Great but incredibly depressing.