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A review by celia_thebookishhufflepuff
Clay's Ark by Octavia E. Butler
2.0
Trigger warnings: This book is heavy with child rape, rape, and incest, and I'm going to address those in my review.
Review
Everyone loves a book where child rape is completely normalized. But it's because of alien parasites, so it's okay right?
The premise is that a carrier from a space mission infects a bunch of people with alien parasites. These parasites give them inhuman strength, an insatiable appetite, and unstoppable lust and sex drive. The bottom line is that these people need to keep multiplying to survive, and so they have to find people to infect.
[b:Clay's Ark|60933|Clay's Ark (Patternmaster, #3)|Octavia E. Butler|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1461533398l/60933._SY75_.jpg|1008173] is told through a series of past/present back and forth. The lone survivor from the ship has to seek out people to multiply with the alien disease, in the past. In the present, a father and his two teenage girls are traveling on the open road, and are ambushed by these people. One of the girls has cancer and is expected to die. So she accepts her fate by being extremely open to anyone raping her throughout the story, and to whatever the infected decided to do. She tried to get infected herself even though she knew she had poor immunity because it would help her get noticed by men (at least those who were infected and lustful). As a childhood cancer survivor and a young woman, I hated this character and everything about her storyline. This was so bad.
The other characters didn't really give you a lot to care about. Aside from being horny for most of the book, the only characters who had any potential were Eli, the first contaminated, in his past POV, and Blake in the present with his internal struggle. I didn't feel any connections to any of them.
I will say the writing wasn't bad. I don't know whether I'd be interested to explore more of [a:Octavia E. Butler|29535|Octavia E. Butler|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1242244143p2/29535.jpg]'s work or more in this series. I would have given this three stars if not for how gross it felt at the end. This made me uncomfortable, but not the kind of uncomfortable that makes you think. Just icky uncomfortable.
Review
Everyone loves a book where child rape is completely normalized. But it's because of alien parasites, so it's okay right?
The premise is that a carrier from a space mission infects a bunch of people with alien parasites. These parasites give them inhuman strength, an insatiable appetite, and unstoppable lust and sex drive. The bottom line is that these people need to keep multiplying to survive, and so they have to find people to infect.
[b:Clay's Ark|60933|Clay's Ark (Patternmaster, #3)|Octavia E. Butler|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1461533398l/60933._SY75_.jpg|1008173] is told through a series of past/present back and forth. The lone survivor from the ship has to seek out people to multiply with the alien disease, in the past. In the present, a father and his two teenage girls are traveling on the open road, and are ambushed by these people. One of the girls has cancer and is expected to die. So she accepts her fate by being extremely open to anyone raping her throughout the story, and to whatever the infected decided to do. She tried to get infected herself even though she knew she had poor immunity because it would help her get noticed by men (at least those who were infected and lustful). As a childhood cancer survivor and a young woman, I hated this character and everything about her storyline. This was so bad.
The other characters didn't really give you a lot to care about. Aside from being horny for most of the book, the only characters who had any potential were Eli, the first contaminated, in his past POV, and Blake in the present with his internal struggle. I didn't feel any connections to any of them.
I will say the writing wasn't bad. I don't know whether I'd be interested to explore more of [a:Octavia E. Butler|29535|Octavia E. Butler|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1242244143p2/29535.jpg]'s work or more in this series. I would have given this three stars if not for how gross it felt at the end. This made me uncomfortable, but not the kind of uncomfortable that makes you think. Just icky uncomfortable.