Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Fledgling

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

50 reviews

katherine_kelley's review against another edition

challenging dark slow-paced

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

1.75

Screw this book! Who said this was good? How? The pedophilic stuff was wayyyy worse than I thought it would be going in. I want to say I know why Butler put that in this, but I would be lying. It was just gross, and if you didn't know, pedophilia is normal and okay in this world. So just know that going in. I'll never forget this book, that's for sure. I also didn't connect to the plot, and the book just ended. I would have given this 2.5-3 stars. If it weren't for the abrupt ending, I would have said the pedophilia stuff was just not for me and the purpose was over my head. However, I literally have no idea why the main character had to be a sexualized child, and the book ends before it could convince me. RIP Octavia Butler, though, because she probably would have made this a series which might have righted my problems with the novel. I hope I have more luck with Butler's other works because so far, I have only really liked one.

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leanne_miron's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

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

2.0

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queer_bookwyrm's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense 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

4.0

4 ⭐ CW: violence, hunting, descriptions of blood and gore, blood drinking, eating raw meat, sexual content, racism/bigotry, slurs, pedophilia?

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler is the last book she wrote before she died in 2006. This is a bittersweet moment for me, since it means I've now read all of Butler's published works (except for Survivor since it's out of print). I guess now this means rereads!

We follow Shori Matthews as she wakes up in a cave with severe injuries and no knowledge of who she is, where she came from, or how this happened. We learn quickly that Shori isn't human. After healing fully and finding burnt ruins of a community, she is picked up on the side of the road by a good Samaritan, named Wright, who thinks he's helping a child in distress. Shori realizes she's actually a vampire after she bites him. They go on a mission to learn more about Shori and her past and to find others like her.

Shori is a creature called an Ina, who take humans as their symbionts. Ina can't survive without humans, and the Ina extend the lives of the humans bonded to them. A good chunk of the book is spent figuring out who killed Shori's families. Butler has been fond of writing about unique and complex family structures, and the Ina/symbiont family structure is no different. Butler did such a good job with establishing a culture so different from our own, that at first it was hard to read.

The main barrier for someone reading this book would be the apparent pedophilia. Though Shori is a 53 year old vampire, she has the body of a ten year old human girl, and is still considered a child by Ina standards. In Ina communities, children Shori's age start acquiring symbionts and part of the feeding process involves pleasure that turns into sex. In essence we have human men having sex with a person who looks prepubescent. This is a pretty muddy line, since Shori is clearly old enough to consent, even though if she were human she wouldn't be.

This was clearly meant to be a series, but Butler died before she got the chance. I would love to have seen Shori grow up and learn more about the complex society of Ina. Butler's vampire lore is so different from any other vampire book I've read. As always, Butler includes real world problems in her own way. There are themes of racism and bigotry, consent, and free will. We also have a lot of polyamory and queer characters.

Content Warnings

redcapediver's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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

4.0

Weird! Let’s pray they never make a movie

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birdy_books's review against another edition

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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? N/A

3.0

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ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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? Yes

4.5

“If you’re right about what you’ve remembered so far, you’re not human,” he said.
“What if I’m not?” I asked. “What would that mean?”

TITLE—Fledgling

AUTHOR—Octavia Butler

PUBLISHED—2005

GENRE—sci-fi / vampire fantasy / speculative fiction

SETTING—the Northwest, an intentionally unspecified timeline

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—vampire legend & lore reimagining, love, polyamory, racism & white-/Ina- supremacy, justice, community, Black power

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

CHARACTERS—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

STORY/PLOT—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

BONUS ELEMENT/S—A totally original take on vampire lore and vampire worldbuilding that was so deeply philosophically explored that I was completely hooked! Devastated beyond words that we’ll never get the second and third books. 🥺😞

PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️—“That wasn’t the way I should have felt, but it was the way I did feel.”

“Ask me questions when you want to know things. Tell me whatever you believe I should know. Complain whenever you want to complain. But don’t talk to other people when you mean your words for me, and speak the truth.”

The Ina, not exactly vampires, but they are “long-lived blood-drinkers” who have traditionally not been able to be exposed to sunlight or to even be awake and active during daylight hours, are Butler’s unique conception of the vampire legend. With niche genre stories—especially ones about vampires that can so easily feel cliche or redundant—I always appreciate a thorough reimagining of the accepted or usual tropes, especially when they explore deeper themes and philosophical topics and that is exactly what Butler does here in Fledgling and was what made this such a successful read for me.

My favorite thing about this book was the main character of Shori whose journey through the book from self-(re-)discovery to (found)family leader & protector, to seeker of justice was phenomenally done. I have never read an author manage a character so that they simultaneously seem so good and heroic while still having flaws that they must learn to acknowledge and overcome without *any* of it feeling forced in the slightest. I can’t say more without bein spoilery but I will say that I think the story’s overall pacing was actually a mirror to the nature of Shori’s character—her inner calmness combined with a potential for serious and sudden violence. Shori is probably one of my new alltime favorite characters.

Another of my favorite explorations was the one on the parallels between the nature of the relationships between the Ina and their symbionts and the nature of love between humans. I’m thinking specifically of a scene early on where

the Ina MC, Shori, gives her new symbiont, Wright, the option to leave, but neither of them want that, but they’re not sure why, not sure if their choice is truly freely made or if they’re compelled—Shori by her need for Wright’s blood, Wright by the compulsion in his blood to obey Shori

—which kind of does feel like love in some ways. There’s that element of “I really don’t know deep down why I love this person but I do and I would rather die than leave them” sort of thing. Which also feels very vampiric too in a way…. It’s interesting. Like how could you know if your choice is freely made, and more importantly, how much does that really matter to you in the end? There is also a really effortless demonstration of the nature of queer love and polyamory among not just the Ina but their human symbionts as well that I thought was very important and really well done. Wish there had been something explored vis-a-vis non-allosexual love but… 🤷🏻‍♀️

I also enjoyed the way the justice system of the Ina was structured and functioned, the way the Ina could distinguish between a lie and the truth, and how racism was present among even a non-human species that traditionally presented as white humans and what that meant for the desire of some of the Ina to find a way to develop melanin in their offspring to potentially make them able to function in daylight. I also loved how the Ina communities were structured around female Ina and male Ina family groups and why, and how the female Ina were considered much more powerful and more dangerous than the men. Even the way Butler described the various different types of Ina community structures with the self-sufficiency of most of the communities but with an intention not to be fully isolated (except for the few groups that were but that was set up as a specific manifestation of those particular groups’ misguided values). I think there was probably a lot more, too, subtly layered in here and there and I definitely have been wanting to go back and reread certain parts to explore more about Butler’s worldbuilding. This would make such a great bookclub pick because of all the themes and elements that you could just discuss for hours!

“It was painful to listen to them. I wanted to scream at them. How could they blind all their senses so selectively? And how could they see me as so impaired? Maybe they needed to see me that way. Maybe it helped them deal with their conscience.”

I saw a few parallels to other modern reconceptions of the vampire legend such as Anne Rice’s and Deborah Harkness’s but neither of those authors (imo) did the philosophical explorations that Butler did for her characters and her worldbuilding (though after Butler, I would say that Harkness’s books get the closest to what Butler was trying to do).

Final note: The pedophilia

-that-wasn’t-really-technically-pedophilia-even-though-it-absolutely-felt-like-it-was…. 😬 I’m not going to lie I was about to dnf after that scene which is like less than 50 pages into the book 😬 BUT then I went back and read the introduction by Nisi Shawl—which I had been trying to save to read until after I finished the book—as well as some reviews online and decided that it would be worth trying to finish the book anyway and I am happy to report that that was basically the only instance of that feeling in the entire book and by the end there is actually a reason (a good reason? I think maybe, actually, but other readers may feel differently)

for why Butler made that choice. I will say though that the feeling throughout the book is one that is very allosexual-normative, which is why I felt a bit of that Anne-Rice-y-ness was present in the story. 🙈🙃

“What do vampires want?” “They want to go out into the sunlight.” — from the Introduction, by Nisi Shawl

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

TW // blood, violence, animal death, pedophilia, graphic sexual content (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—

The Gilda Stories, by Jewelle Gomez
Anne Rice 😬
A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
What We Do In the Shadows (2014 film, 2019 tv series)

Content Warnings

marareading's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

2.75

I am so torn. I was so thrilled when I found out Octavia E Butler wrote a book about vampires. I love vampire books. This is definitely a new take on it. The entire book is from the perspective of Shori, our MC. To prevent spoilers I'm just say that her perspective creates a story where she has to learn a lot and you learn with her. I didn't like this. However, it was necessary to the plot, so it was also very smart for the author. Her writing style isn't what I'm used to, she is much more staccato in her information and building.

Shori is a 52 yr old vampire that appears to humans as a 10-12 year old girl. The way thay sexuality is discussed with her gabe me a BIG ICK. It honestly made it very hard for me to get through the book at all. Despite that we do learn that she is in fact 53 in vampire years, the author hammers home REPEATEDLY that she presents as a small child. Yet adults of both genders continually sexualize openly. It was something I couldn't get past throughout the book. Without this portion of the story I would have loved it, but I can't get past it.

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annamorgan27's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional slow-paced

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

3.5

Content Warnings

anxiousnachos's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

3.0

Well I’m sad that I didn’t enjoy my first Butler book as much I expected to, I struggled with both content and writing style of this. I think I should have maybe started with another one but alas I was drawn in by the vampires and didn’t know much else about this book!

I’ll start with the writing style: it’s quite an abrupt and spare/brusque style of writing which I wasn’t a huge fan of. I’m keen to explore and see if this is common in all Butler’s work or if it was specific to this work. What wasn’t spare or abrupt, but was a bit more fleshed out however, and what I think was the best part about this book, was the fascinating development of the vampire lore. The way this was written with the amnesiac main character learning about her people and culture allowed us to also learn a lot about the vampires, and Butler’s take on them was so interesting.

However let’s get to the crux of it: I just didn’t get the whole point of the pedophilia. Okay, no that’s wrong. I do get the point of it. For readers not aware, the main character is a 53 year old vampire (note, this is still a child physically and sexually in vampire terms) who looks like a ten year old child in human terms. There is on page sex scenes between grown human adults and the 10 year old. I could have managed this, understood it, if it had been left at the whole ‘vampire bite causes sexual attraction’ thing, which for some of these human characters it was. Once they’ve been bitten, it causes them extreme pleasure, thus making them want to do anything to get that pleasure again. But then certain human characters also spoke about being sexually attracted to the main character, who looks like a ten year old child, *before* they were bitten… That’s where I got kind of lost, because that’s where the whole power imbalance suddenly changed and tipped? It was no longer the vampire in control but men openly wanting to have sex with a child? And I think I understand what Butler was trying to do: wanting to flip the vampire mythology on its head and make us think, instead of having centuries old vampire men preying on younger human women (physically and sexually mature but perhaps not as mentally mature as the older vampire?), whereas here you have a vampire who is mentally more mature but not physically or sexually mature preying on humans. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I think this intention actually works. I don’t know if I can personally equate a woman who is physically, sexually and mentally an *adult* by human definitions and thus *can consent* (I acknowledge power imbalances in other vampire relationships given the mental age difference) to a *child* who is not considered an adult by either human or vampire definitions. I feel like I’m making no sense. I feel like the flipping of this mythology doesn’t work because the two situations don’t equate power wise? I mean, I guess it’s made me think and it’s made me uncomfortable! Is that the point?

Content warnings: sex with a 53 year old in the body of a ten year old child, blood, animal death, racism, slurs including n-word, murder, violence, gun violence, pedophilia (characters are sexually attracted to 10 year old child *without/before* vampire bite/lure)

Content Warnings

ztifhael's review against another edition

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challenging slow-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

3.75

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