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geniusscientist 's review for:
Adulthood Rites
by Octavia E. Butler
I . . . dunno, man. There really isn't much to this book. There isn't much of a plot, it's mostly just world-building, except it isn't really world-building either, it's like . . . alien-building. New "people" on this new earth have five parents each, two human and three Oankali. The Oankali have tentacles, and all kinds of senses, and can see things on a molecular level, even deeper than that, they can look at DNA, and when all these people have sex with each other it's super intense and wonderful, because they can all share thoughts and feelings and whatnot, and Butler finds it all a lot more interesting than I do.
She keeps saying sort of the same stuff over and over again, although it's possible she's getting more and more detailed and I just didn't notice because I wasn't paying a lot of attention because I don't . . . care? Like, the first book I took as a kind of allegory for Europeans enslaving Africans, but I kinda lost of the thread of that here, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to still be thinking about that or not, but it's so specific and in depth that I think she's maybe just talking about the aliens now. And how they have sex. And how alien they are to humans, but how the humans should get over that (or maybe they shouldn't?) Over and over again. I guess she was trying to bring up issues of Humanity and how awful we are, but I didn't find any of that to be particularly compelling or novel. Like, people are jerks, they tend towards violence, they fear what they do not understand, they desire freedom to make their own decisions about their destiny, even if it means their own destruction. Is any of that a revelation?
But despite all this discussion, the world doesn't really seem real to me. What do these people do all day? They're deliberately staying in a hunter-gatherer situation because anything beyond that leads to violence and the eventual destruction of civilization, which, okay, fine, I get what you're saying, but there's no, like, culture? There's no art? And when I say art I mean all of it: visual art, music, theater, literature, poetry, crafting -- there doesn't seem to be any of that. So it kind of loses my interest. They're just people sitting around in their plant houses all day? I dunno, man. I don't know if that's a deliberate choice, or she was just so excited to make us REALLY UNDERSTAND this alien sex that she's envisioned that she forgot to think up anything else. I mean these aliens are boring as fuck, in my opinion, I don't care how great their orgies are. But she seems to really dig them, the idea of them.
Also the aliens have super-rigid gender roles, like, male Oankali are always like this, female Oankali are always like that, neuter Oankali are always like this (and everyone always wants to Do Them, ew), there are only hetero pairings, etc. But none of that seems like a critique of gender roles, no one ever questions them, that's just the way the aliens are. That seems so unlikely! And so boring.
I read this because I already owned it. I have the next one too so I'll probably read that as well (they're very quick reads) but I probably wouldn't otherwise. I want so badly to like Octavia Butler, you guys, but it still hasn't happened yet.
Oh also there should be a glossary, all these crazy alien words are ridiculous and hard to keep track of.
She keeps saying sort of the same stuff over and over again, although it's possible she's getting more and more detailed and I just didn't notice because I wasn't paying a lot of attention because I don't . . . care? Like, the first book I took as a kind of allegory for Europeans enslaving Africans, but I kinda lost of the thread of that here, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to still be thinking about that or not, but it's so specific and in depth that I think she's maybe just talking about the aliens now. And how they have sex. And how alien they are to humans, but how the humans should get over that (or maybe they shouldn't?) Over and over again. I guess she was trying to bring up issues of Humanity and how awful we are, but I didn't find any of that to be particularly compelling or novel. Like, people are jerks, they tend towards violence, they fear what they do not understand, they desire freedom to make their own decisions about their destiny, even if it means their own destruction. Is any of that a revelation?
But despite all this discussion, the world doesn't really seem real to me. What do these people do all day? They're deliberately staying in a hunter-gatherer situation because anything beyond that leads to violence and the eventual destruction of civilization, which, okay, fine, I get what you're saying, but there's no, like, culture? There's no art? And when I say art I mean all of it: visual art, music, theater, literature, poetry, crafting -- there doesn't seem to be any of that. So it kind of loses my interest. They're just people sitting around in their plant houses all day? I dunno, man. I don't know if that's a deliberate choice, or she was just so excited to make us REALLY UNDERSTAND this alien sex that she's envisioned that she forgot to think up anything else. I mean these aliens are boring as fuck, in my opinion, I don't care how great their orgies are. But she seems to really dig them, the idea of them.
Also the aliens have super-rigid gender roles, like, male Oankali are always like this, female Oankali are always like that, neuter Oankali are always like this (and everyone always wants to Do Them, ew), there are only hetero pairings, etc. But none of that seems like a critique of gender roles, no one ever questions them, that's just the way the aliens are. That seems so unlikely! And so boring.
I read this because I already owned it. I have the next one too so I'll probably read that as well (they're very quick reads) but I probably wouldn't otherwise. I want so badly to like Octavia Butler, you guys, but it still hasn't happened yet.
Oh also there should be a glossary, all these crazy alien words are ridiculous and hard to keep track of.