Reviews and Comments

the fight between olamina and bankole is ultimately the fight between nuclear family and community family (or just community?). individualistic vs collective approach to life.

which makes sense since acorn seems to be an amazing anti-capilist-ish community based around mutual aid (i mean, the way the school works is amazing).

but the two things that bother me a lot are:

• the religious aspect (earthseed) which i find totally unnecessary;

• the doubt that butler herself wasn't aware of it? the narrator is clearly against the community, even though it might be mainly for the "religious" aspect, nonetheless...

and then, again, i feel like butler believed humans were inevitably naturally evil. im gettin this through the younger bother marc (amongst many other characters) as well as the whole xenogenesis trilogy.

that is not a good starting point to start any community work imo.

i was hoping to see the community go and start a new world/society/whatever. instead, we already have new villains in the first chapter. uff!

Loads of food for thoughts beside the usual "omg she's such an amazing writer!".

Don't know about Butler politics, but it's pretty obvious she's anti-authoritarian and I love how, through the Oankali, we learn that one of the main flaw of humankind it' around their hierarchical structure.

But, then, she also pushes a lot on this "human nature" which is inherently bad somehow and that really fucks up any socio-political thought. Like, do they kill each other because of hierarchy and shit or just because that's the way they are so nothing really can be done to save them.

And speaking of nature, yeah, due to the story itself, there's loads of talks about reproduction and sex and I know I wasn't going to read a gender-bending book, but she just cling so much to the binary that I cannot even see illusion of feminism?

Compare the protagonist of the first two books.

First one, Lilith, woman. She's used throughout the whole story and in the end she also get an unrequested pregnancy Virgin Mary style which never gets addressed for real.

Second one, Akin, man. He literally goes against millennial old "traditions" of his race by setting up a Human-only colony on Mars despite having basically no allies in the process.

So, yeah, doubts. It would be nice to discuss them with whoever would like to. :)

5 pages into it and the Ooankali fixed the problem with the male-born humans. i hope they will pass by our version of Earth as well when the time will come.

the premise is strong and the story is impactful. few days after having finished it, though, i feel that something was missing? or it wasn't enough? not sure. anyway, i loved also the afterwards by clipping. regarding the history of the project.

and i have to say that moment of sexual tension in the pool between the two wannabe lovers, beside being super queer, made me so bloody horny on the spot. damn!