Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - Parable of the Talents

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Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

43 reviews

plainpaige's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad 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? No

5.0

I think I liked this book more than its predecessor, despite the often disturbing, challenging storyline. Butler again made predictions that seem to be coming true to some degree. I enjoyed this book's foray into the politics of a crumbling society, though I suspect it may be difficult for some people who endorse Christianity to swallow. I love a good cautionary tale, though, and if you can struggle through the hard concepts, you will be rewarded with a beautiful story of the human experience.

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chaoticnostalgia's review against another edition

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dark 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? Yes

3.75

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eamador's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring 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

3.75

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stevia333k's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense

Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

So I'm white, and I read this series because anti racist black tiktokers recommended this book series over the handmaid's tale. I took them up on their recommendations because I often cited THG for about a decade for similar purposes & yeah this series has a lot of overlap. So hence I read this 2nd book. I'm thankful for this series because for a while I was thinking of using religion preaching with uncommon canons as praxis, and this series has discouraged me from that in addition to hearing about the Jim Jones people's church, etc.

I came into this book wondering how to deal with a civil war situation & I came out wanting to get a good cry in about the social constructs of family. (Looking back I actually had a similar reaction with THG #1) I came to this book to cry, yet that topic shift startled me. While the plot does rely on certain technologies that don't exactly map onto our world it still has helpful info & strategies. For example the laying low & collecting info etc was inspiring & helpful in affirming lessons I had gotten.

I've also learned the teacher praxis was emphasized again. While I often hear this in reference to the GPCR & MLM (including Peru) it seems that Maoism's arena can be more generally described as "civil warfare" & political terror against people's war.

As a white disabled queer muslima feminist, this shit hits hard, especially considering that the 10 generations of enslaved people who were mentioned had muslims when they were kidnapped. Like holy shit this book touched on a mood. I read about half this book on a Friday, but it took nearly 2 weeks to read the first half. I've been busy but still.

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rlgreen91's review

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challenging emotional reflective sad 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

5.0

I thoroughly enjoyed this book from start to finish. Granted, like most books by Octavia E. Butler, reading this would leave me with a slight feeling of existential dread, but I enjoyed every minute of it, oddly enough.

It's hard to review this book - it feels like the only way to truly do it justice would be a review that's more of an early draft of an academic research paper. Butler's novels tend to be like that, in my experience, but this is the book that seems to exemplify this phenomenon the most.

If I had to pick one aspect of the book to reflect on, it would be the many mistakes that Lauren made due to her youth. You start to see this a bit in Parable of the Sower, but the fact that Lauren's most formative experiences as a child and young adult occurred during such a chaotic time has an impact on the decisions she makes as things gets "better." On the one hand, she does display a maturity beyond what you might expect from a woman her age, simply because of how harsh her world was, and how it forced all children to grow up quickly if they wanted to survive. At the same time, we see that as the world slides back from the extremely harsh conditions to a more "normal" mode of society, Lauren is often ignorant of how people, organizations, and institutions will react and how social and cultural norms will change in response. So throughout the novel, we see Lauren make mistakes because she's unaware of how people and society will operate during "normal" times, beyond the mistakes you typically see young adults make as they start to make their way in the world. In some ways, Lauren is able to recover from those mistakes, but regardless, they do have far-reaching, unpredictable consequences in some cases. As readers, this should prompt us to question our common view of how leaders being "forged in the fire" during a crisis is always seen as a positive view of their work.

Again, there is a lot of thought-provoking content in this novel. A review can't do it justice - honestly, multiple dissertations probably couldn't do it justice. What a wonderful gift Butler has left us with. 5 stars.

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lectrixnoctis's review

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challenging dark emotional informative mysterious relaxing sad tense medium-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? Yes

3.0

Octavia E. Butler was the renowned author of the novel numerous groundbreaking novels like "Kindred", "Wild Seed" or "Parable of the Sower". She has won many awards for her works and is a pioneer in her genre exploring black injustice, women's rights, global warming and political disparity.

In 2032, Lauren Olamina endured the destruction of her home and family and realised her vision of a friendly community in northern California based on her recently founded a religion, Earthseed. The fledgling community supplies shelter for outcasts facing persecution after the election of an ultra-conservative president who vows to "make America great again." In an increasingly separated and dangerous nation, Lauren's subversive territory minority religious coalition led by a young black woman--becomes a mark for President Jarret's rule of terror and oppression.

Years after, Asha Vere reads the diaries of a mother she never knew, Lauren Olamina. She struggles to negotiate with her mother's estate as she searches for solutions to her past. She is caught between her duty to her chosen family and her calling to guide humanity into a better future.

This book is written as a diary and employs the identical style as the first in this duology, getting the same issues with it. The protagonist has the propensity to distance herself from what transpired to her through her diary documenting as a way of self-therapy. However, it does not necessarily ensure an engaging read because of how healing this factual representation of events can be. The lived experiences make for a fascinating story, but the tone is not there to empathise with the individual you are meant to be sympathising with.

There is a silver lining, yet Where the first piece of the series was a monologue by Lauren Olamina, new narrators are brought into this volume. Lauren's spouse gets a pair of pages, and so does one of her brothers, but these contributions are so small they are entirely meaningless in hindsight. The star narrator of this novel is Olamina's daughter. She delivers a new and fresh mindset, which is not an unexpected feeling she grew up without and far away from her mother. This voice offers the reader a break from Lauren's self-indulgent narrative and, for those like me who had hardships relating to the self-declared Messiah, a representative of reason one could connect to.

I do not doubt that this book, like the first one, is an absolute classic and a dystopian masterpiece; however, I had The same problems with this book as the first one.

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martinza's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.75

Follows a small community and mainly their leader how they try to survive and re-establish under religious oppression. Partly pretty brutal, but it shows how a kinder way tries to persist . I cried sometimes.

Kind of a How to establish an opposing cult under christian nationalism

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