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A review by nordstina
Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler
2.0
After reading both of the Parable books, I want to go back and read Octavia E. Butler's other work, and I started with Fledgling as was intrigued by the vampire concept and it wasn't part of a larger universe as some of her other works are. We encounter what appears to be a girl who awakens in the woods, not knowing who she is, and is famished, weak, and injured. It turns out she is an Ina (vampire) who is in her fifties and her entire family was killed. She is special as she is able to walk during the day, while other Ina must sleep. Through the course of the book she tries to recreate what happened to her kin, meets other Ina, and tries to solve who is to blame.
There is an obvious parallel to racism and the purity of the race which is a bit heavy-handed here. I felt that because she has lost her memory, it was a super convenient plot device to tell the reader all about the history of the Ina, their powers, their weaknesses, etc. as Shori is also learning about this at the same time. Additionally, something that just squeaked me out that I could NOT get passed- while Shori is fifty something years old, she looks like a pre-teen, and the man she first meets she begins a sexual relationship with. Even if he KNEW she was that old, she looks like a girl, and he did not know her age when then relationship started. It was such a turnoff for me early on in the book, I had almost abandon. So between the quasi-pedophila and convenient way to tell history via amnesia, this was a fail for me.
There is an obvious parallel to racism and the purity of the race which is a bit heavy-handed here. I felt that because she has lost her memory, it was a super convenient plot device to tell the reader all about the history of the Ina, their powers, their weaknesses, etc. as Shori is also learning about this at the same time. Additionally, something that just squeaked me out that I could NOT get passed- while Shori is fifty something years old, she looks like a pre-teen, and the man she first meets she begins a sexual relationship with. Even if he KNEW she was that old, she looks like a girl, and he did not know her age when then relationship started. It was such a turnoff for me early on in the book, I had almost abandon. So between the quasi-pedophila and convenient way to tell history via amnesia, this was a fail for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pedophilia