Reviews with content warning for Religious bigotry - Parable of the Sower

Reviews tagging 'Religious bigotry'

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

25 reviews

lectrixnoctis's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense 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? 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 of her genre exploring black injustice, women's rights, global warming and political disparity.

When international climate instability and economic emergencies guide social chaos in the early 2020s, California evolves full of threats, from pervasive water poverty to the abundance of nomads who will do anything to stay alive.
Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated neighbourhood with her priest father, family, and neighbours, harboured from the surrounding lawlessness. In a civilisation where exposure is a risk, she suffers from hyper empathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' pain.
Developed and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard to save her loved ones from the coming disasters her tiny neighbourhood stubbornly disregards. But what starts as a fight for survival soon directs to something largely more: the birth of a renewed faith and a startling vision of human destiny.

The main themes of this book are dystopian. It talks about a not so bright future or even an awful lot where people fight for their lives. It is expected that people are getting killed just like that, and whole cities are destroyed due to climate change. It may seem horrific and terrible. Still, I think that the author made a strong point with it. We live in a global pandemic, and seeing all these things that could happen is pretty relatable to our current times. This novel is more for younger readers; however, I recommend it for anyone.

The author has an exciting writing style while following the main character throughout the story via journal entries. We see all the horror of the future, set in the early 2020s. I do not doubt that this book is an absolute classic, and it is a dystopian masterpiece; however, I am not that fond of dystopian works, and it is prolonged and a bit confusing at first. This book shows you that the journey is the end goal that took me a lot of time to get into it. While reading it, I felt disheartened because I couldn't connect with the characters at the first end. After all, the horrific topics this book talks about made it even harder. Yet, this book is probably worth reading, especially nowadays due to climate change and the black lives matter movement. I will read the second part of the book, and I hope it will be easier for me to follow along for the sequel after I get into this book.

Content Warnings

rynstagram's review against another edition

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3.75

I can't believe it took me this long to pick up an Octavia Butler book. I've been missing out!

The social/environmental/political/etc. issues dealt with in this book hit super close to home, especially since it takes place in the late 2020s... This is like the opposite of what happens when you watch Back to the Future now--it's funny to see what we've done and what's different and what we're still trying to do. But Parable of the Sower is almost like a worst-case scenario situation.

Sometimes the pacing was a little weird, especially when they got on the road. And the Earthseed stuff, while I understand its intrinsic value to Lauren's character and the plot, was sometimes too much for me. I kind of feel like Harry--it's interesting to learn about the belief system and some of it I can see being true, but it's also not quite right. I'm interested to see how the Earthseed community grows in the next book.

Kind of like reading The Poppy War, this is an emotionally difficult book to get through. There's a sense of urgency that runs through both books, except by the end of Parable of the Sower, the urgency seems to have slowly dwindled even though the actual characters must still feel that urgency. This is probably due to the pacing.

The diary entry format lent itself really well to this story, especially because it affects the story instead of just being a medium for the story. That was really clever.

(Also, though I really love how diverse the characters are ethnically, racially, religiously, etc., there's a dearth of queer characters so far. I think they mention gay people only once or twice, and even then only in passing. It's hard for me to believe that no one they've come across or seen of the thousands of strangers would be queer. And Lauren is perceptive enough to notice things like that--how people act when they're a couple, etc.)

Content Warnings