Reviews tagging 'Excrement'

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

36 reviews

c_cant98's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • 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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edonnel's review

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challenging dark hopeful inspiring medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

Parable of the Sower has sat on my TBR list for a while and I wasn’t sure I wanted it to be my first Octavia Butler book. But somehow in this book of graphic descriptions of what feels like a apocalyptic and guaranteed future, Butler wove a soul-bending story full of hope. Hope for when reality hurts more than you could ever imagine. Hope for 2024, the year I am reading this and the year the book begins.

I especially appreciate the female MC whose empathy is her disability, because in a world where global disaster is the every day news, feeling others pain is can be crippling. In the last week while reading this, two CAT 5 hurricanes have drown the eastern seaboard, earthquakes ricochet along the west coast, and genocides funded by my country have devastated entire nations. What can one person do but despair?

But despite it all, hope is found, in community, in children, and in seeds. And all I can do is keep planting seeds, keep teaching children, and keep hoping.

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ravenrobbins's review

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challenging dark inspiring 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

4.25

Intense. Very good and very nerve wracking in the same breath.

I think I need to read something bubbly next…

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nonamenogender's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful 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? It's complicated

3.5

I loved many aspects of this book. I think the slow descent into chaos is more realistic and frightening than a nuclear apocalypse. I think Lauren is an interesting and compelling protoganist. I love how we are experiencing this story through her journal entries, and Lauren's account is not 100% reliable. My biggest criticism of this book is how it portrays and discusses substance use. 

The crazies/paints/junkies in the book are all murderous psychopaths who take pleasure in burning things and people. They are portrayed as less than human, monsters. And their behavior IS monstrous, but we get no explanation for this other than the drug makes watching fire better than sex. None of the primary characters, other than Keith, who is also a monster, use drugs.

The moment I kept waiting for that never came was either for Lauren to meet a drug user who doesn't fulfill the mold established earlier, or for the crazies to be more than just junkies, and some kind of violent political group or criminal enterprise. But no, their violence is always senseless and brutal.

This wouldn't bother me so much if the drug "pyro" wasn't such a major part of the storytelling. It plays on the racist fears around the crack epidemic, but not in any way that challenges them. The only hint that how Lauren describes drug users is not accurate to the world she lives in, is that her perspective is often naive, and sometimes narrow minded. Butler says the parable books are what she imagined could happen if the worst of societies problems were allowed to continue unchecked. in that context, "pyro" is the least realistic aspect of the book.

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ourlamp's review

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dark inspiring reflective tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0


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geometricsun's review

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful 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

4.5


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ikiteahill's review against another edition

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dark reflective medium-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? No

5.0

This book was hard to read. It's billed as scifi/fantasy but it's really more focused on a dystoipian society. Taking place in the USA starting in the year 2024, it's an alternate universe but parts of it hit really close to home with how eerily similar they are to society today. Some of the content was hard to stomach. But it brings up such interesting philosophical concepts. Like, what is God? What is religion? What does that do for people? What is human nature? How do we respond as a species under threat? You have to be in the right mindset to read this one but it's worth reading. I think this one will stick with me for a while, even if I'm not sure I'm ready to read the sequel. 

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lindseygcarden's review against another edition

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4.0


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seph268's review

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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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theemeraldgirl23's review

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dark emotional inspiring mysterious 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

4.5

A fantastic speculative fiction novel about our current times and what would happen if California became a dystopian wasteland. Lauren Olamina is a tremendous and refreshing protagonist from her view on God and community. It was unlike any book I've ever read before. 

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