Lilith is a survivor of a catastrophic war on Earth. She finds herself on an alien spaceship where she meets one of the most interesting alien races in literature - the Oankali. The Oankali are a race that travels the universe "trading" genetic material with other races and would like to do the same with humans.
Lilith is chosen to be a sort of liaison between Oankali and the other survivors saved by them. The conversations between Lilith and Oankali are the highlight of this novel. In these conversations, Butler reveals the true themes of the book; the Other, the price of survival, the meaning of identity, sexuality and the ability to make one's own decisions.

To people, the Oankali are so different and repulsive that it seems to be difficult for some characters even to look at them. The dread of the new reality for the survivors is palpable and I had to be in a special mood to pick up the book, it was that real.

However, for me, the novel just lost its magic once Lilith woke up the rest of the survivors. These characters were so bland and unbelievable. I found myself skipping paragraphs just to see what happens at times. I was gonna DNF this at 70%, that was how bad it got.

Another thing that bothered me was the portrayal of humanity in this book. Pretty much all male characters are your proverbial caveman types. Women tend to just go along with whatever they suggest.
The survivors also pair up as soon as they are woken up for some reason, without any real connection.

It made me feel like the Oankali are really right to want to genetically alter humans because they are clearly beyond repair (not to mention they ruined their planet). On the other hand, the Oankali are helpful, stable and logical, but give humans no choice and practically rape them. They are in it for their own reasons, absolutely selfish.

I find it difficult to read this as an allegory of colonialism as it just doesn't work. Still, it is thought-provoking and poses some interesting questions. It's just a little dry for my taste. ( )

This was a great read. I am not a big sci-fi fan because I abhor all the descriptions of spaceship or other mechanical works and don't care for explanations of lightspeed and how far planets are from one another. Just give me the story!

But this type of sci-fi is something that I can get into. Alien thoughts and behaviors (without them being the obvious bad guys), and their interactions with humans.

This was my 3rd or 4th Kindle Unlimited rental and I hope to find more books there that I enjoy as much as I did this one. I'll be continuing with the rest of the trilogy even though Kindle Unlimited doesn't include the audiobooks for the other two books. ( )

(1997)Very good SF about an alien race that tries to save the human race after it has had the end of the world war. Lilith becomes the main vehicle for the race to convert humans into a hybrid race that will the ?best? of both worlds. However, she does not want the job despite coming to understand and empathize with them.Amazon.com ReviewIn a world devastated by nuclear war with humanity on the edge of extinction, aliens finally make contact. They rescue those humans they can, keeping most survivors in suspended animation while the aliens begin the slow process of rehabilitating the planet. When Lilith Iyapo is "awakened," she finds that she has been chosen to revive her fellow humans in small groups by first preparing them to meet the utterly terrifying aliens, then training them to survive on the wilderness that the planet has become. But the aliens cannot help humanity without altering it forever. Bonded to the aliens in ways no human has ever known, Lilith tries to fight them even as her own species comes to fear and loathe her. A stunning story of invasion and alien contact by one of science fiction's finest writers.

CW: Imprisonment, Isolation, Breeched Consent, Subjugation of Autonomy, Assault, Sexual Assault, Body Horror, Transphobia, Homophobia

This is just my initial thoughts on finishing it, as I am nowhere near ready to fully process and discuss this novel.

This is the best, worst, most and least enjoyable thing I have ever read. I have never been so wrapt and so easily consuming, and loving such an exquisitely told nightmare. I don't think anything has ever made my skin crawl, heart ache, and such powerful, shuddering waves of revulsion and depression (complimentary).

This book is a lot and I wasn't expecting it. I advise checking in with yourself and getting an idea of the difficult subjects contained in this book, something I didn't do and wish I had, because if I had read this a month earlier, it would have broken me and I don't think I would have finished it.

This is a book about humanity and inhumanity, personhood and plaything, power, autonomy, consent, free will, and the utter disregard and inversion of these things. It is an incredibly ugly, horrifying, and disturbing story told with such beauty and craft that it elicits all emotions, often the strongest feelings of the pleasure of art and reading, coupled with equally or more powerful negative, suffocating, maddening emotions.

I previously enjoyed Parable of the Sower and Talents, though the former more than the later, and was aware of Butler's skill and ability to not turn from the darker and ugliest parts of the human experience, but this is a work orders of magnitude of more exquisite artifice and inhuman nightmares. The suffocating and stabbing through silk approach makes this so much more affecting for me than the raw, bloody evil people can perpetrate.

Butler's skill and imagination are only matched by her ability to pierce the darkest heart of humanity, crafting alien beings from this stygian material, and I am truly in awe. ( )

There are some mild spoilers in the sense that this talks about context stuff re setting/aliens that comes up through the book but v mild and shouldn't ruin any surprises

I feel weird about this because it's a really interesting setting, the aliens themselves are fascinating, Lilith is a really great character and I loved seeing everything from her perspective. But. BUT. I can't describe how uncomfortable I feel about the way the aliens behave sometimes. The basis of the story is that although the aliens are empathic and want to protect humans they *are* completely in control because humans near enough wiped themselves out. So they call all the shots. And this makes sense and it's a good basis for a story about the conflicted emotions relating to this - without co-operating humans have no chance but if you do co-operate humans become subservient. And I like a lot of what's done here. But the behaviour of the aliens sometimes becomes INCREDIBLY coercive and messed up without it being questioned in text. There's a part where a human says they don't want to take part in something with an alien and the alien *does it anyway* because "his body wanted it". Which is a really messed up way of thinking about consent. You also discover one type of alien has more coercive powers which it uses to manipulate particularly humans (although also the other aliens sometimes) - its scent makes humans particularly responsive and likely to agree. Which is creepy but it's not really addressed just how creepy this is. At one point they drug the whole group of humans so they can introduce themselves and get confused when people find this upsetting afterwards. It's hard to describe but I just got such a strong feeling of discomfort after reading through the book such that I couldn't move on to the next one for a bit. It was a feeling of like... violation by proxy which sounds ridiculous but I felt like a voyeur into something really gross. It's not that I can't read about this stuff it's just I wanted more conflict etc in the text, I wanted someone to be there taking my hand and saying "this is creepy, this isn't normal" but I felt like the book wasn't agreeing and it was unpleasant and ugh. I dunno. It was a very strange experience ( )