Octavia E Butler - Fledgling
Publisher - Headline
Price - £9.99 paperback £4.99 Kindle eBook
A young girl wakes up in the woods, gravely injured and alone, with no memory of what happened or who she is.
As Shori heals, she realises that she isn't like the people around her, which leads to a shocking discovery. She is a fifty-three-year-old vampire, and in terrible danger.
To save herself, Shori must learn anew everything about the power and desires that she holds, the life that was stolen from her - and those who want her dead.
This feels a sad review. This is the last of the books by Octavia E Butler; indeed it is the last they wrote before an untimely death. I’m reading and I’m afraid Fledgling didn’t really work for me. It feels challenging but also retreads certain points of Butler’s other works. But it does give me a chance to consider my thoughts on this remarkable author.
In Fledgling we’re thrown into the deep end with Shori our narrator and main character waking up unable to see and with no idea who she is. She has no idea where she comes from but as she recovers from unspecified injuries, she realises that she has great strength and can drink blood from human beings. Human beings who soon become under her thrall. Gradually she finds her family is indeed what has often been called vampires but as we knew them but Shori discovers a war going on that is destroying her people and she needs to work out where she stands.
Butler is always keen for us to reconsider what life may be and placing a 53-year-old vampire in the body of a child and making her sexually attractive to adults is a challenge and ultimately, I’m not quite sure it was needed or really worked. It raises slightly problematic images which I didn’t feel were explored. I also have to say this as one of the slowest paced books that I’ve read and felt overall a little aimless. I’m never a fan of amnesia plots at the best of times and this one really didn’t grab me. That no further books were able to expand this world or characters means it feels a little loose and open ended.
However, if I consider the wider picture, we can see Butler has almost returned to the Wild Seed world of communities among humans with different beliefs and customs that are not the norm. Butler, I think carries that more in the Xenogenesis/Lillith’s Brood series where humanity capacity for destruction and survival gets further explored. Butler I think is one of the few authors to get under the skin of humanity’s psyche and arguably this coalesces manifestly in the Parables duology which is troublingly accurate on how our near futures could develop. Butler challenges ideas of race, gender, sexuality and control which pushes the reader to consider these even past our comfort zones. Kindred does similar as it faces up to the past of the US. I strongly recommend Butler and am very glad I did this exercise.
Next Readalong - Ursula K Le Guin!
