A review by bookish_bry
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This was honestly an amazing book. I was very impressed by the characters' portrayals. The plot in the end was a rather straightforward one (despite the complications of time travel), but the characters and relationships were so very complicated and well written.
Rufus was such a complex character who we saw grow from a helpless toddler to an irredeemable man. And we can imagine similar stories having happened to his parents. We watched the world poison him and we watched him poison the world in turn. His and Dana's relationship was so... human. At the end, he was irredeemable in mine and Dana's eyes, but he never stopped being human.


Butler didn't shy away from having messy, very human characters. It's often common for people to completely dehumanize slave owners, which is fair! They did horrible horrible things, but by pretending they were not human, it is easy to distance ourselves from them. It's easier to pretend people today would have never possibly been capable of those things if they'd been born into that time. It makes it easier to turn away from things that are happening now because we couldn't be evil because those people weren't real people. 

On the other side, it's easy to wonder why people allowed these things to happen. We find ourselves wondering why slaves didn't stand up in mass and overwhelm their masters as one. Yet, Butler engages with this too.
Through Dana, we saw her make concessions to this world she was thrust into. We saw her walk that line between surviving and keeping a kernel of her true self alive. In the end, she drew the line in the sand, killing the child turned man who she had such a complicated relationship with. We saw it in other slaves too. We saw it in everyone from Sara to Nigel as they gave pieces of themselves to retain what little they had. Even Alice, much like Dana, eventually stole back her freedom, but in a very different way than Dana.


Butler's portrayal of all of these people as flawed, often very flawed humans, was very impressive.

I think
Dana loosing her arm and the book as a whole really was a perfect metaphor for how slavery still leaves its permanent marks on our society. It reaches through time and bites at us.
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