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A review by cookedw
Patternmaster by Octavia E. Butler
2.0
This feels like far and away the least unique book in the series. It is definitely the one that most could have been written by .
The plot is not particularly interesting - while it touches upon a little bit of the slave/control elements found also in Wildseed, for example, mostly it's just about some silly power grabby stuff.
I don't think there's anything really to care about in this book. The Clayarks are a terrible and underdeveloped foil, and that is no different here. But really the faults with this one are that the political structure is just really underdeveloped and doesn't really seem to work. If this were in the hands of someone like Ursula LeGuin, whose strength is in those big structures, I feel like it would work better. Butler's strength is definitely not the hard sci-fi -- her voice is evocative, and the more she leans into the internal struggles of her characters, the stronger the books are, IMO. This is just not one of those.
Funnily, despite kicking off a series, it doesn't really feel like it should. While this is a fizzle of a chronological ending, it also doesn't feel like it needs to go on, so it makes sense that the later books went to the before-times.
Anyway, this is a first book, and the world is much better for this somehow giving Octavia Butler the space to write. But Wildseed is the only must-read in this series, and I'd personally recommend stopping after that and Mind of My Mind if you want another, since those stand relatively alone and are the only ones that for me really got into the characters' heads and explored interesting social themes.
The plot is not particularly interesting - while it touches upon a little bit of the slave/control elements found also in Wildseed, for example, mostly it's just about some silly power grabby stuff.
I don't think there's anything really to care about in this book. The Clayarks are a terrible and underdeveloped foil, and that is no different here. But really the faults with this one are that the political structure is just really underdeveloped and doesn't really seem to work. If this were in the hands of someone like Ursula LeGuin, whose strength is in those big structures, I feel like it would work better. Butler's strength is definitely not the hard sci-fi -- her voice is evocative, and the more she leans into the internal struggles of her characters, the stronger the books are, IMO. This is just not one of those.
Funnily, despite kicking off a series, it doesn't really feel like it should. While this is a fizzle of a chronological ending, it also doesn't feel like it needs to go on, so it makes sense that the later books went to the before-times.
Anyway, this is a first book, and the world is much better for this somehow giving Octavia Butler the space to write. But Wildseed is the only must-read in this series, and I'd personally recommend stopping after that and Mind of My Mind if you want another, since those stand relatively alone and are the only ones that for me really got into the characters' heads and explored interesting social themes.