A thoughtful, wonderfully imaginative tale of a group of human beings who've been rescued by extraterrestrial unknown after a nuclear war has wiped out most of the human race. As she did in "The Parable of the Talents" Butler wrestles with the problem and burden of leadership. The titular character is a strong and able and has seemingly been selected by the humans' new hosts to prepare a group of human beings to resettle Earth. However, she doubts their good intentions, seems unwilling to give up her humanity after learning that they have perfected genetic engineering, and has to deal with human nature, which seems no less intransigent and self-defeating on a giant, living spaceship than it did on earth.

Both Butler's description of the aliens and their overwhelming strangeness and Lilith's initial repulsion to them are well-portrayed, as are the efforts she makes to bond with her indescribably weird hosts. There aren't your standard bulb-headed little grey men here -- obviously put a lot of thought into how a species as different as the Oankali and the Ooloi might consider the universe. And, like Butler's earlier novels, there's no doubt that this extraterrestrial encounter will not be entirely chaste: sex and a desire for closeness all play a part here.

In the end, though, this novel, interesting as it is, is too short to be really satisfying. Butler seems to be setting up a trilogy, and I suppose that that's fine: I don't know how she was planning out her work at this stage of her career. But I could have used a bit more of Lilith's story. I suppose that I'll just have to read the other two volumes in this series. ( )

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. ( )