Maura (maura853) - , reviewed on 7/4/2018 + 542 more book reviews

No one writes aliens like Octavia Butler. In a few skillful strokes, Butler can sketch in a fully-formed and marvelously thought-out race of aliens, never shying away from the sublime differences that might provoke a horrified reaction from your average human. I love the T'lic, of her classic short story "Bloodchild." It's clever how she never really lets the reader come face to face with this insectoid race, only allowing us to see them fleetingly, out of the corner of the eye, like something out of a remembered nightmare. And, another one of my favorites, the Communities of "Amnesty," who are little more than sentient clouds of dust bunnies. Sentient dust bunny clouds with a pretty amazing superpower, however ... If you've ever grumbled that the aliens of classic SF are too boringly humanoid and unimaginative, try Butler.

The Oankali of Dawn, on the other hand, are just humanoid enough to make their differences truly unsettling. As in "Bloodchild," Butler captures the essential weirdness of a symbiotic relationship with aliens that forces the readers to question their assumptions about love. Is sexual "love" a sort of addiction? Are all relationships nothing more than a "trade," regardless of whether you are talking about security, prestige, ego-reinforcement, or you're talking about genetic variety and enhancement? If the power balance between two partners is completely out of balance, can you actually call it "love" at all?

If Butler has a flaw, it's in her secondary characters, especially the humans. Lillith, our POV character in Dawn, has a passionate affair with another human "guest" of the Oankali, Joseph, but I never buy Joseph as a living, breathing, fully formed character. He's been parachuted in, with some essential nobility and a smattering of endearing faults, to give Lillith a human to interact positively with. The same goes for the villains among the humans who join Lillith's human band: pure cardboard, lightly stirred with some stupid stubbornness and misogyny. That's a shame, because Lillith herself is so fully realized, and the quandary she faces as she comes to terms with the Oankali's plans for the human race might have benefited from some better developed characters for her to interact with.

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