Reviews tagging 'Self harm'

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

16 reviews

marena02's review

dark emotional hopeful sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I don’t know how to feel about this book as a whole in terms of plot and story. I will say what I loved most about it were the characters and the world building. Octavia Butler has a way of making these dystopian landscapes feel so real in more ways than one, and having these characters interact in a way that’s genuine and authentic. Lauren as a main character is an interesting perspective to read from. She’s not necessarily considered a chosen one archetype that’s usually in these types of stories. She’s very cynical, a know-it-all, and just a girl who slowly becomes a cult leader. I liked her. I was overwhelmed with the amount of side characters at the beginning of the book and at some point couldn’t keep up with who was dating who or the child of who, but as the book progressed it got easier to digest. Her ending with up a 50 year old man was a choice. I really don’t know how to breakdown my thoughts about this book, but the gist is I liked it. The second half more than the first.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Bullying, Child death, Cursing, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Incest, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Slavery, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Police brutality, Trafficking, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

_meganrose's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“All that you touch, you Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.”

I may or may not be insane for voluntarily reading this given that it takes place in the present with very uncanny parallels, but here we are.

This was an incredible read. I would give it an infinite number of stars if I could! And I am half convinced that Octavia E. Butler either was a time traveler or could see into the future because the fact that this was written in 1993 but so much of what she wrote about 2024-2025 has literally happened.. here is to hoping and praying that the years to come that she wrote about do not come to fruition.

Her writing is amazing. This was dark and emotionally poetic. Will definitely be rereading this. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Cancer

aynotan's review

adventurous dark emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Blood, Excrement, Grief, Cannibalism, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail

louie_hax's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Death, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, and War

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Drug use, Gore, Police brutality, Grief, Cannibalism, and Classism

Minor: Classism

jenneh_jenkins's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexual violence, Slavery, Stalking, Death of parent, Murder, and Classism

viporras's review

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Incest, Infertility, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Cannibalism, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, War, and Injury/Injury detail

chlschn's review against another edition

challenging dark tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This was hard and challenging to read, and I needed many breaks. I felt so uncomfortable and anxious reading it bc Lauren’s always on edge, always on watch, always on alert to survive. Just when you start to get hopeful for some extended respite, it’s turned upside down. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death

Moderate: Death, Drug abuse, Blood, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Self harm, Sexual violence, Slavery, Cannibalism, and Death of parent

emergencily's review

4.0

Written in the 1990s, the novel is set in the year 2024 in a USA on the brink of total apocalypse due to climate change, political collapse, and wealth inequality (familiar?). The government is an ineffectual farce, and a newly elected fascist, hyper-conservative president vows to "Make America Great Again" by driving out the undesirables of society and repealing labour protections to open the door for corporations to enslave workers in modern company towns. The social safety net is nonexistent; police and firefighters are corrupt and bloodthirsty; nightmarishly violent crimes are the norm, particularly against women and racialized people as gender and race relations deteriorate; and companies with monopolies on food and water drive prices to untenable levels. 

The teenaged protagonist, Lauren, lives in a small, majority Black gated community just outside LA, led by her pastor father. As the world deteriorates around them, Lauren loses faith in the Christian teachings her father preaches, and begins to secretly develop her own religious system that she calls "Earthseed" -- the belief that change is the only constant and akin to God, and that humanity is destined to leave the doomed earth and live in the stars. Her community is poor, but relative to the desperate poverty outside their guarded walls, downright privileged. They manage to eke out a living through mutual aid and redistribution of their scant resources and running armed watches. This tenuous peace is shattered when invaders knock down the walls to pillage the community. With few survivors left, Lauren decides to travel north to try to seek refuge across the border in Canada. Along the way, she picks up other survivors and spreads belief in Earthseed among their small group.

I thought the world that Butler built was fascinating and eerie, like a funhouse mirror reflection of our current world. She captured all the same sociopolitical and environmental problems we have and dialed them to a hypothetical max, envisioning the apocalypse not as a singular event, but as a slow, downward spiral wrought by environmental devastation and selfishly destructive human responses to such. The world as we know it ends with a long, drawn out whimpering death knell, not a bang. I can imagine how fresh this book's take on a post-apocalyptic world was when it was published in the 90s, with its deliberate focus on a Black woman's experiences, on imagining the shape of race and gender relations in a crumbling empire, and its parallels of slavery imagined in a future fascist state. It was horrifying, scary and a crazy page-turner that I stayed up to finish in one night. 

But I felt like the climax of the book (the destruction of the community) came a little early. The second half of the book sort of fizzles out and drags on repetitively as she wanders down the highway picking up stray survivors. Like a monster-of-the-week format show, every chapter she finds a scrappy and vulnerable survivor, earns their begrudging trust, and inducts them into Earthseed - wash and repeat like 10 times in a row.

 I also felt like it was hard to understand Lauren's Earthseed religion and her emotional stakes in it, although a lot of her core beliefs were super fascinating -- the idea of God as a Trickster, as an intangible and ever-changing concept. But at times, I felt that Earthseed existed less as a religion with actual impact on the world and characters, than as sprinkled blocks of exposition in the book. Maybe it was my own problem connecting to it as a generally not very spiritual person myself? But I also know she planned this series as a trilogy (sadly passing before she could complete the third book) so it's possible she handles the Earthseed plotline and religious themes more in depth in later books.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Incest, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Police brutality, Trafficking, Cannibalism, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail

sondered's review

challenging dark hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Blood, Grief, and Mass/school shootings

Moderate: Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Violence, and Trafficking

seph268's review

challenging dark informative sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Octavia Butler wrote a manual for survival our unprecedented times and we’ve all been overlooking it. Would absolutely recommend, cannot wait to reread.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Rape, Self harm, Sexual violence, Slavery, Transphobia, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Excrement, Trafficking, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Cannibalism, and Injury/Injury detail