Dawn By Octavia Butler

10/10. This book is a banger. First off, the writing. This is my third Octavia Butler book and I am once again impressed by her ability to be really engaging while also being very precise and efficient. It feels like the book starts and then just GOES until the very end, which is really refreshing coming from a Sci fi book. Secondly, oh my LANTA does the author know how to make me uncomfortable. It’s not until the Ooloi bonded to Lilith starts to make changes to her that I was truly scared, because it’s insidious. Nothing the Oankali do is out right malicious or bad or mean, but it’s extremely manipulative. They treat sentient, fully grown members of a species like house pets or children. In the beginning it’s stuff that makes sense and seems purely logical, like “hey you need to get used to us so that you don’t lose your sanity or get violent when we let you out.” And like okay sure I’m tracking, and then it goes all the way to “hey im not letting you go to earth, I’ve separated you from your friends, and I’ve made you pregnant with an alien baby without your consent” and “Humans will come back because we made touching each other feel gross and they can’t have kids without us. We did this without their consent”. This is the part of the book that I found most interesting. The dynamic between the Oankali and Humanity. Oankali, again not actively malicious, never treat humanity as equals and never gives them the full picture. They do this to protect themselves, because “humanity and the indivuals in it aren’t ready”, to maintain an advantage. And that’s the real perversion. They can chemically make humans love them, they can drug them, imprint on them, but because it’s always from a place of power/authority the whole thing is fucked. The two (oankali and human) are never equal, never even close, so there can be no true trust and therefore no real love or bonding.

by Shadeslayer2112