Reviews tagging 'Pregnancy'

Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

45 reviews

stevia333k's review against another edition

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.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Vomit, War, Xenophobia, Abandonment, Car accident, Child abuse, Child death, Death of parent, Deportation, Domestic abuse, Excrement, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Colonisation, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Gun violence, Incest, Infertility, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Gore, Misogyny, Lesbophobia, Mass/school shootings, Mental illness, Murder, Outing, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Rape, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Sexual assault, Racism, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, and Trafficking

Moderate: Antisemitism, Homophobia, Islamophobia, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Minor: Addiction, Alcohol, and Alcoholism

siri_paulson's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective 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? Yes

3.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Torture, Slavery, Physical abuse, Grief, Religious bigotry, and Confinement

Moderate: Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Trafficking, Rape, Murder, Hate crime, Death, and Child abuse

Minor: Pregnancy and Pedophilia

rlgreen91's review against another edition

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. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Rape, Religious bigotry, Torture, and Violence

Moderate: Homophobia, Pregnancy, and Slavery

apollos_books's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring 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

5.0

god damn. i have no other words. such a powerful series. and, unfortunately, as relevant as ever.

this book as all the content warnings though. like literally. read with care and caution

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Bullying, Child abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Forced institutionalization, Misogyny, Police brutality, Pregnancy, Alcoholism, Blood, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Grief, Physical abuse, Incest, Gore, Kidnapping, and Murder

jessthanthree's review

challenging dark sad tense slow-paced

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

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death of parent, Violence, Torture, Trafficking, Religious bigotry, and Rape

Moderate: Suicide and Pregnancy

alisonvh's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I appreciated that, unlike the prequel, this book is told from multiple perspectives, which gives the reader a chance to see Lauren’s flaws in a way we would not otherwise get to see. I love that we got to see her as a complicated human being instead of some sort of all-knowing prophet.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Slavery, Violence, Kidnapping, Trafficking, Medical content, Medical trauma, Hate crime, Suicide, Pregnancy, Physical abuse, and Gun violence

Minor: Sexual violence

alomie's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I enjoyed this book overall as part of a duology, an almost apocalyptic world bought on by climate change, flowing into a world that is recovering and building on the first book, but this book was a major change in pace, and a change to multiple POV's. 

I found the start of the book slow, and the middle glacial and uncomfortable the end was good, this is where it really picked up for me but I think this was only because at least something vaguely positive was happening. 

It was bleak, and it was slow, and for me it was quite hard to wade through the book. It was pretty harsh to read and I was finding it hard to pick up. 

I am glad the characters got a happier ending. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Violence, Torture, Suicide, Slavery, Sexual violence, Homophobia, Gun violence, Grief, Forced institutionalization, Car accident, Religious bigotry, Rape, Racism, Pregnancy, Physical abuse, Lesbophobia, Kidnapping, Hate crime, Emotional abuse, Death, Classism, Child abuse, Child death, Vomit, Sexual harassment, Sexual content, Pedophilia, Murder, Death of parent, Cursing, Adult/minor relationship, Sexual assault, and Sexism

jojo_'s review against another edition

dark slow-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

3.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Confinement, Murder, Violence, Abandonment, Child abuse, Lesbophobia, Religious bigotry, Physical abuse, Sexual violence, Torture, Homophobia, Racism, Slavery, Fire/Fire injury, Xenophobia, and Sexual harassment

Moderate: Classism, Grief, Ableism, Death of parent, Rape, Addiction, Blood, Drug abuse, Incest, Misogyny, Kidnapping, Trafficking, Infidelity, and Pedophilia

Minor: Gun violence, Pregnancy, Police brutality, and Toxic relationship

toffishay's review against another edition

adventurous dark 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? Yes

2.75

A well-written and understandable follow up, but oh man is it brutal! It kind of solidified that dystopians are just not for me. I enjoyed the first book more.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault

Moderate: Pregnancy, Sexual assault, Rape, Slavery, and Racism

ruthlessreads's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious 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? It's complicated

5.0

This is one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read. It was scary how accurate Butler’s interpretation of the future is and makes me worry for what comes next in this country. It’s intense & I highly recommend looking for trigger warnings before reading because some of the events that take place are extremely traumatic. If you want a sci-fi that will make you think deeply about the state of the world, you should read this book. But start with Parable of the Sower!

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Hate crime, Violence, Slavery, Murder, Homophobia, Religious bigotry, Racism, Physical abuse, Lesbophobia, and Child abuse

Moderate: War, Torture, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Rape, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, and Emotional abuse

Minor: Vomit and Pregnancy