Reviews - Amanecer | The StoryGraph

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4.37k reviews for:

Amanecer

Octavia E. Butler

4.16 AVERAGE

khan422's review against another edition

3.75

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

My first full length horror & my first Butler! Truly a wild wild ride. And I’m still not sure what to make of it. But I think of this story often. I could read people’s writing and theories about this story forever.

mama_chicharra's review against another edition

3.5

Rapey tentacle aliens just aren’t for me. Wanted to like this more since I did enjoy Parable of the Sower. It was very slow going for a bit, only because I wasn’t interested in this world or the characters. Maybe it’s the effectiveness of the writing but I was just very uncomfortable with the Oankali after a while and I’m not keen to revisit that feeling. Interesting premise but not enough for me to want to continue with the rest of the series.

jessathenian756's review against another edition

5.0

This book was horrific to read. My first Octavia Butler.

I couldn't put it down. I was glued to the pages, waiting, my guts twisting as what I feared was to happen came true.

The characters are thrown into a situation with no right answers. Who made the best decisions is entirely dependent on your own point of view; however, the enemy is clear.

ttthomas's review against another edition

3.0

Octavia Butler's treatise on xenophobia is well-written, thematically rich, and has excellent worldbuilding. Lillith is a great main character and her arc is well-written and thematically consistent, as are her dynamics with the other characters. However, this is obviously just set-up for the next two books, and while Lillith is well-developed, most of the cast is... not.

gennaful's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

victorvic's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Wow. Amazing. Prescient. Can't believe I hadn't read any Octavia Butler before. This definitely fits in my favorite genre, science fiction for anthropologists.

parue's review against another edition

3.0

This book is... hard to describe. I wanted to love it as much as everyone else seems to. I wanted to love it as much as I loved Parable of the Sower.

And I really liked it at first. The Oankali are extremely interesting and I loved hearing about their lives, their culture, their way of living. They're so fully realized and I wish more scifi books delved deep into what their aliens are like.

It went really downhill for me though once

Spoiler

Lilith started to awaken more humans.

I mean... it was a really great study of human psychology. But man oh man did it stress me out so much, because I could picture those exact scenarios playing out.

Spoiler

AND I JUST WANT HUMANS TO BE BETTER AND THEY AREN'T and it sucks a lot. Not to mention, I really did not care for any of the humans aside from Lilith. They had no redeeming qualities for me.

It felt like I was taken on a nice bit of an escapism journey learning about the Oankali, and then suddenly slapped with reminders of

Spoiler

how absolutely shitty people can be

.

But of course, Butler did an incredible job showing Lilith's complex emotions. There's a lot to think about here, especially regarding consent, human psychology, violence, culture, and survival.

All in all, I'm not sure how I would rate this book. I'm going to leave it unrated until I have more time to think about this.