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kjjohnson 's review for:
Adulthood Rites
by Octavia E. Butler
Closer to 3.5.
I struggled to connect with the main character of this book, compared to Lilith from the first book. This makes sense, as he is both half (2/5ths?) alien and extremely young for a lot of the book, but I found it more difficult to really care about what he was going through. Some of it felt repetitive (the arguments presented by the oankali and humans, how violent humans are, Akin's need to explore), and I somewhat had to push myself to finish the book.
On the positive side, Butler's world-building remains fantastic, as well as the thought she put into what makes a human, the alien perspectives, what happens when they're mixed, and the slow decline of the hopeless sterile humans remaining alive. I'm also curious to see how the Mars colony will go and how the trilogy will end. Her ideas are interesting - is it inevitable that man's intelligence + hierarchies will lead to destruction? - and her writing style is top-notch.
I struggled to connect with the main character of this book, compared to Lilith from the first book. This makes sense, as he is both half (2/5ths?) alien and extremely young for a lot of the book, but I found it more difficult to really care about what he was going through. Some of it felt repetitive (the arguments presented by the oankali and humans, how violent humans are, Akin's need to explore), and I somewhat had to push myself to finish the book.
On the positive side, Butler's world-building remains fantastic, as well as the thought she put into what makes a human, the alien perspectives, what happens when they're mixed, and the slow decline of the hopeless sterile humans remaining alive. I'm also curious to see how the Mars colony will go and how the trilogy will end. Her ideas are interesting - is it inevitable that man's intelligence + hierarchies will lead to destruction? - and her writing style is top-notch.