Just finished it. Haven’t been blown away by a work of speculative fiction like this in a long time. I have the sequel on hold on Libby. It reminded me of the Road in how realistic it was, but ofc it was very different in many ways. I loved The Girl with all the Gifts and Station 11 and Cell but a lot of them just seem kind of like an adventure set in the apocalypse. They’re almost like YA (this is not an insult, I loved The Hunger Games books). People aren’t in a deep state of mourning about the world they have lost, they aren’t looking to carry some immortal flame into an uncertain future or trying to construct a new world religion in a world that is the same as the world has always been. They aren’t destroyed or forged by the apocalypse. I guess The Road and The Parable of the Sower felt like literature, in a way, like they were communicating something deeper about humanity. I love a story that’s just trying to tell a story, like Stephen King’s Bill Denbrough says in IT, but I want more than that sometimes.
by RestlessNameless
5 Comments
First of all it has a sequel, Parable of the Talents! Also I wouldn’t say other Octavia Butler books are necessarily that similar but they are all incredible, my favorites are Wild seed, Kindred, and Xenogenesis. The most similar to the parable books may be Clay’s Ark? Kind of
In many ways I feel nothing is like Parable of the Sower, such an extraordinary book! Have you read Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake trilogy?
War of the Worlds? It’s classic so it definitely feels more like literature and, it goes without saying, it’s a huge influence on a lot of mid/post-apocalyptic stories.
Blood Child – Octavia Butler (Short Stories)
The Deep – Rivers Solomon
The Stand – Steven King
Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdich
Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank