Reviews

this started out really well for me and went downhill pretty fast. the setup was interesting, i enjoyed butler's writing, and i was interested to learn more about this crazy world and its people. but as soon as we got to the walking around portion...it lost me. i'm not sure if i want to read the sequel, but i do want to try her other books! maybe kindred next?

i'll throw a spoiler here for the part that bothered me the most:

bankole. i sent a picture of the face i was making to my boyfriend when i realized what was about to happen between bankole and lauren and...yeah my face pretty much stayed like that for the rest of the book. and it's not the age gap - or, it's not *just* the age gap, i guess. it's that she immediately thinks of her father. how he's one year younger (i think? or maybe one year older) than her father. how he keeps calling lauren "girl" all the time. how he, a 56 year old, only thinks to ask how old laurenis AFTER they have sex the first time. lauren, a NEWLY TURNED 18 YEAR OLD, with someone who makes her think of her father. idk dude. it just felt icky to me. and bankole was a bit of a shady character anyway. then it gets shadier when it's been, what? a few weeks? and he's all "i intend to marry you" and agrees that she and all their traveling companions will live on this huge property he owns somewhere vaguely north.

the earthseed parts also really bothered me. it started out as a way for lauren to work through all her theological questions without upsetting her preacher father. it was perfect for journaling, for a young person discovering who they are and what they believe in. but later on when she was just preaching and speaking about it so self-assuredly, it started to annoy me. it felt like a young person explaining to everyone how the world works, when she spent most of her life in a walled, exclusive community. at one point a character (maybe bankole?) asks when she started making it up or something, and she denies that she made up anything, saying she just "found" the truth or whatever. i think for me, there's a fine line where religion in books moves from being interesting to annoying; earthseed started as interesting and made its way to annoying.

i know this is a beloved book by a beloved author, and for a while, i got it too. but some things just moved the narrative to a place that made me uncomfortable..and that's on top of all the SA and grape (as emily fox says) that i already expected to make me uncomfortable. and when lauren starts talking about the "destiny" of earthseed...i thought, yeah, lets do that. i'm more interested in that book lol. so again, idk about the sequel, but it might happen eventually. if i'm in a good headspace. we shall see. no matter what, i'm glad i read this with the CliMates book club, even if i went off a little too much during the liveshow about how much i hate the way people outside the US tend to think we're all over here with our own personal arsenals. guns terrify me. they always have. they probably always will. some places may be the stereotype, but not all places. since rereading mistborn era 2 recently/currently, i think i'm just extra super aware of how much i dislike reading or hearing about guns. but i digress. this book wasn't quite what i expected, but i'm still glad i read it!