Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Parable of the Sower

Exceptional.

A type of book that reaches beyond the traditional imagination and limitations of dystopian scifi. It felt so real, so easy to read, so important. As soon as I started reading I was hooked, and I would have finished it in one sitting if I wasn't interrupted. The story is both depressingly accurate in its assessment and predicitions of human society's collapse, but also beuatifully imaginative and almost optimisitic. The whole concept of Earthseed is fascinating and I'm sure there are many philosophical, psychological, anthropological, intersectional feminist, and theological interpretations from others I could read up on. I've been trying to read less books that will fuel my climate anxiety, but this strangely helped me, I felt less alone. Octavia E. Butler understood these dangers within our society so many years ago, I felt solidarity. I felt inspired and compelled to action. I have already bought the second book of the duology. I particularly enjoyed that Butler inroduced the concept of

hyper empathy

and how she presented it as a strength and a weakness to Lauren and her group, I think that's an astute insight into our current plague of apathy and individualism. Overall, I will recommend this to everyone and anyone.

Quotes:

"All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change."

"Then, someday when people are able to pay more attention to what I say than how old I am, I'll use these verses to pry them loose from their rotting past, and maybe push them into saving themselves and building a future that makes sense. That's if everything will just hold together for a few more years."

"Sometimes naming a thing - giving a name or discovering a name - helps one to begin to understand it. Knowing the name of a thing and knowing what that thing is for gives me even more of a handle on it."

"Things are changing now, too. Our adults haven't been wiped out by a plague so they're still anchored in the past, waiting for the good old days to come back. But things have change a lot, and they'll change more. Things are always changing. This is just one of the big jumps instead of the little step-by-step changes that are easier to take. People have changed the climate of the world. Now they're waiting for the old days to come back."

"She was afraid, and that made her defensive."

"Civilisation is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation. Civilisation, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilisation fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces. EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING."

"Intelligence is ongoing, individual adaptability. Adaptations that an intelligent specied may make in a single generation, other species may make over many generations of selective breeding and selective dying. Yet intelligence is demanding. If it is misdirected by accident or by intent, it can foster its own orgies of breeding and dying. EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING."

"Once people get the idea that it's all right to take what you want and destroy the rest, who know's when they'll stop."

"We aren't gang types. I don't want gang types with their need to dominate, rob and terrorize. And yet me wight have to dominate. We might have to rob to survive, and even terrorize to scare of or kill enemies. We'll have to be very careful how we allow our needs to shape us. But we must have arable land, a dependable water supply, and enough freedom from attack to let us establish ourselves and grow."

"Worship is no good without action. With action, it's only useful if it steadies you, focuses your efforts, eases your mind."

"Kindness eases change. EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING"

"Oh, God, there you go again. You've always got a disaster up your sleeve."
"I see what's out there. You see it too. You just deny it."

"I believe in something that I think my dying, denying, backward-looking people need. I don't have all of it yet. I don't even know how to oass on what I do have. I've got to learn how to do that. It scares me how many things I've got to learn. How will I learn them?"

"Belief initiates and guide action, or it does nothing. - earthseed: the books of the living."

"Embrace diversity, Unite - Or be divided, robbed, rules, killed, by those you see as prey. Embrace diversity or be destroyed."

"'Live!' Dad said. 'That's all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don't know if good times are coming back again. But I know it won't matter if we don't survive these times.'...And Dad is right...but he doesn't go far enough... It isn't enough for us to just survive, limping along, playing business as usual while things get worse and worse. If that's the shape we give to God, then someday we must become too weak - too poor, too hungry, too sick - to defend outselves. Then we'll be wiped out. There has to be more that we can do, a better destiny that we can shape. Another place. Another way. Something!"

Content Warnings

throwback682's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark inspiring reflective 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? Yes

4.0

Reading this book in the year before its action takes place is both troubling and validating.

Content Warnings

thoseoldcrows23's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

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

5.0

This is a masterfully written novel with incredible theme work and a world that feels startlingly real. I think if I had read this at a different time (when I wasn't still trying to get over a terrible reading slump) I would have liked it even more; however, as it stands, I still think this is an excellent work of dystopia, and I will be continuing on with the sequel later this year.

UPDATE UPON REREAD:
Yeah, I liked it more this time. 5 Stars Baby!

Content Warnings

abigailbat's review against another edition

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adventurous dark 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

Read for Classics book group, this book only made me want to read MOAR OCTAVIA BUTLER. I wish I had read this as a teenager because I think it would have been formative. This is one of those books that I wondered a million times where it was going, and I appreciated it so much by the end. It's eerie how likely this scenario still seems, especially in light of how the post apocalyptic genre has grown since it was published in 1993. I'm watching The Walking Dead right now and this book had so many parallels. I'm not a sequel girlie, but I super want to read the sequel to this one.

Content Warnings

maameadwubi's review

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challenging dark reflective sad tense medium-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? No

3.0

This book is incredibly bleak; Octavia Butler was incredibly prescient and the parallels between this book and our potential reality made it even more horrifying/scary to read. I wasn’t aware of what I was getting into when I started reading it and had to put it down halfway through to spark not a the rest.
Will be dealing with nightmares for the near future.

Content Warnings