It makes sense that in a collapsing society frightened people would look for someone or something to follow. It is true that Joan of Arc achieved a great deal before her tragic end at the age of nineteen, but in a modern, end times setting, I am not sure how many people would accept an eighteen-year-old as their self-anointed spiritual and civic leader. With that being said, I am not sure how convincing I found her as a prophet. Under the gore and grit, there is a grim kind of optimism, and it is difficult not to get behind Lauren as she navigates the terrors of a civilisation in the process of unmaking itself, bringing a deep well of inner strength to the fight for survival. There were several plot points that had me raising my eyebrows, but overall I really liked this book. Each chapter begins with a quote from the ‘Book of the Living’, but the religion can be summed by its own simple mantra: God is Change. Despite her being the daughter of a Catholic preacher, her belief system has more in common with Buddhism. The novel follows her from 15-18, chronicling her progress as she undertakes a spiritual journey to found a new religion – Earthseed. Our protagonist is Lauren Olamina, an adolescent ‘hyperempath’ who feels others’ pain every time she observes them being hurt. Parable of the Sower is, at least on the surface, a less ambitious text. Kindred, with its time travel plot and strained interracial relationships, is a complex novel about the psychology of race. This is my second Butler read (I reviewed Kindredlast year), and from the first, I found it a simpler narrative than expected. However, the narrative remains relevant to discussions about climate change, and black protagonists are, to this day, uncommon in science fiction. Reading it nearly 30 years after publication, it is difficult to ignore that the setting – a drought-ridden future America crumbling into violence – has been explored many times since, and perhaps analysed with greater depth than can be found in these pages. Parable of the Sower is an apocalyptic dystopia, published in 1993.
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