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madamenovelist 's review for:
Imago
by Octavia E. Butler
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Incredibly disturbing finish to a harrowing commentary on colonialism of land and body alike. Butler is a once-in-a-lifetime talent.
The ending felt a little rushed and more open-ended than I would have liked. Ultimately the most difficult part for me to read were multiple examples of complacency. Lilith has grown complacent, the last human holdouts on Earth end in complacency. And we don’t even know how Akin’s Mars colony is really doing; we’re just left hoping and praying they’re okay. I interpret this choice as a prompt to make you really ponder what you want to make of the future. If you were trying to preserve the best of humanity despite powers insisting we need to be cleansed of impurities, what would you do?
More on the holdouts and how disturbing what happened to them is. Last pockets of free humanity on a dying earth are stricken with disease, disability, and infertility, forcing anyone who can breed into incest if there aren’t enough viable people. So they capitulate at last to the consent-overstepping ooloi in order to be magically cured and bred and chemically/sexually appeased. That’s even more pertinent to us now in the 2020s with Covid-19, climate change, rising eugenics against disabled folks, and plummeting birth rates than it was in the 80s/90s. She really saw everything that would challenge us in the future. Also it is deeply funny to me that the Oankali keep discussing the obvious flaws of human hierarchy but ignore
a) that ooloi are given precedence over everyone else. Even more so now that here in book 3, a conversation between Nikanj and Jodahs revealed that ooloi literally feed during their sexual connections with humans. The Oankali is basically a parasitic species that slowly assimilates their host species into themselves. And the ooloi’s sexual and physical appetites melded could arguably be the entire driving force behind seeking new species out instead of sticking with 2 pairings of males and females of the same species with 1 ooloi. Like damn, thanks to what happened to Aaor we see that horny horny ooloi literally turn into water slugs if they can’t seduce themselves some tasty humans. What even happens to non-construct ooloi. Do we even want to know.
b) how they themselves view other species as flawed, destructive creatures that need to be taken over and fixed by the Oankali in their lofty, philanthropic wisdom. I do believe that also smacks of hierarchy, does it not?
c) how one thing rocking the boat ruins their own plans of How Shit Should Go Down. The veryyyy second that construct ooloi become a thing, everyone shits their metaphorical space pants because despite their curiosity for the new…. a construct ooloi disrupts the hierarchy and becomes difficult to control.
I feel like a just ran a marathon after listening to this audiobook. And I’m more determined to be my authentic self as well.
The ending felt a little rushed and more open-ended than I would have liked. Ultimately the most difficult part for me to read were multiple examples of complacency. Lilith has grown complacent, the last human holdouts on Earth end in complacency. And we don’t even know how Akin’s Mars colony is really doing; we’re just left hoping and praying they’re okay. I interpret this choice as a prompt to make you really ponder what you want to make of the future. If you were trying to preserve the best of humanity despite powers insisting we need to be cleansed of impurities, what would you do?
More on the holdouts and how disturbing what happened to them is.
a) that ooloi are given precedence over everyone else. Even more so now that here in book 3, a conversation between Nikanj and Jodahs revealed that ooloi literally feed during their sexual connections with humans. The Oankali is basically a parasitic species that slowly assimilates their host species into themselves. And the ooloi’s sexual and physical appetites melded could arguably be the entire driving force behind seeking new species out instead of sticking with 2 pairings of males and females of the same species with 1 ooloi. Like damn, thanks to what happened to Aaor we see that horny horny ooloi literally turn into water slugs if they can’t seduce themselves some tasty humans. What even happens to non-construct ooloi. Do we even want to know.
b) how they themselves view other species as flawed, destructive creatures that need to be taken over and fixed by the Oankali in their lofty, philanthropic wisdom. I do believe that also smacks of hierarchy, does it not?
c) how one thing rocking the boat ruins their own plans of How Shit Should Go Down. The veryyyy second that construct ooloi become a thing, everyone shits their metaphorical space pants because despite their curiosity for the new…. a construct ooloi disrupts the hierarchy and becomes difficult to control.
I feel like a just ran a marathon after listening to this audiobook. And I’m more determined to be my authentic self as well.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Death, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual content, Xenophobia, Blood, Murder, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Misogyny, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence