Fledgling | Octavia E. Butler | A COMPELLING PIECE OF FICTION............

Fledgling | Octavia E. Butler | Brilliant

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Fledgling

	Fledgling Octavia E. Butler Grand Central Publishing, 2007 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 69 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A COMPELLING PIECE OF FICTION............

Shori Matthews is a 53-year-old vampire encased in what is seemingly the body of a preteen child. She has awakened from a healing sleep...broken, burned, and with no memory of the harm that has befallen her. She also has a voracious hunger...caused by the fuel that her body has used in its efforts to heal itself. Wandering through what appears to be a village that has been burned to the ground, Shori is picked up by a stranger who simply sees a child wandering the roads alone. It doesn't take long for Shori to discover her desire for blood....and the stranger, Wright, becomes her symbiont. Returning to the village hoping to find some clue about who she is, Shori eventually encounters a man who claims to be her father. He informs her that she is indeed a vampire, part of a proud race of people called Ina. The Ina are all vampires...and are tall, blonde, and very pale; very unlike Shori herself. Shori is informed by her father that she is a feat of genetic engineering; a successful experiment performed by her family in which a male Ina sired a child with an African-American woman...hoping that the darker pigmentation will make their offspring less susceptible to the harmful rays of the sun. In addition, Shori is horrified to find out that the burned out village was actually the home of her mother, sisters, and extended female family (male and female Inas do not live together). Who would want to kill an entire village of women and children? Shori and Wright make plans to meet her father later and move to his village with him...he is thankful that Shori has survived the massacre. When Shori's father does not show up to meet them at the designated time, Shori and Wright set off to his village on their own...only to find that his village has met the same fate as that of her mother's, with only two lone survivors.
The question is...who is killing her family, and why? It soon becomes clear that the killers are indeed Ina themselves, and that the motive for doing so lies in the color of Shori's skin......
An amazing web of the supernatural and science fiction--coupled with a simple study of racism and prejudice even among a seemingly superior race of people, who to that point had been completely unaware of color. A wonderful book, that I could have seen with a sequel were it not for the author's untimely passing.

DYB

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Brilliant

Octavia Butler is one of my favorite writers, I doubt very many authors will rise to her level of writing in my eyes no matter how many decades pass. At first some of the details of this novel were a bit distrubing but I think they were supposed to be so and thus they were well crafted. Her vampire world is a powerful place that should rightly take a spot along side some of the great fictional vampiric societies ever imagined by human beings.

Prejudice knows no species

Fledgling was a wonderful find! It takes the classic vampire story and makes it a contemporary tale. Ms. Butler's final book will surely become a classic in it's own right. This book delves into the prejudice that occurs when two cultures collide, or in this case, when changing ideals collide. When Shori, the 53 year old "child" vampire, recovers from serious injuries sustained when other of her kind, Ina, try to destroy her because she is the result of human and Ina DNA combined, she seeks justice for her suffering and the suffering of her family. Shori's entire family and history are taken from her, but she follows the Ina traditions, laws, and customs to reign victorius in the end. I am saddened that Ms. Butler is not alive to continue Shori's story and the message it has to tell.

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Definitely unfinished

Most reviewers have pretty much summed up the premise of this book. As a long-time Octavia Butler fan, I also saw the shortcomings of the book, but saw it for what it was. This book is similar to some of Butler's previous books in that it's setting a foundation for a long-term series--it's almost like a short story. It is very much like Imago, which also had an unfinished feel. I found myself longing for the next book in the series as soon as I read the last page. The fact that Ms. Butler will never be able to continue the series, is only another sad part of her tragic, early death. Perhaps Tananarieve Due, who was a friend of Ms. Butler and reportedly saw her as a mentor, might consider continuing the series as a tribute. That would be a truly dynamic duo.

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Simply Wonderful

This is a completely new take on the Vampire World which in a way reminded me of the Tananarive Due Novels The Living Blood and My Soul to Keep. (Wow, a team-up of these two ideas would be my wet dream!) Very 21st Century and yet timeless. I easily related to the characters and read this in one sitting. This book touched a lot on predjudice and it's consequences. I can't wait for a follow-up, Please Say there is going to be one!!

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

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