Butler, Octavia E.: Fledgling
Fledgling (2005)
Written by: Octavia E. Butler
Genre: Horror
Pages: 310 (Trade Paperback)
Why I Read It: I think I'd read all of two of Butler's short novels before I decided to go out and buy everything she'd ever written. The decision was especially easy because I loved what she did in her fiction, and her publishing company had re-released her work with shiny new covers! Of course, getting everything all at once meant that everything had to sit on my shelf for a while, so I was quite pleased when you book clubbers voted Fledgling in as our February Book Club selection. Welcome to the Second Annual Octavia E Butler Book Club Discussion (seeing that in February of 2010, we read and discussed Kindred).
The premise: ganked from back cover blurb: Shori is a mystery. Found alone in the woods, she appears to be a little black girl with traumatic amnesia and near-fatal wounds. But Shori is a fifty-three-year-old vampire with a ravenous hunger for blood, the lost child of an ancient species of near-immortals who live in dark symbiosis with humanity. Genetically modified to be able to walk in daylight, Shori now becomes the target of a vast plot to destroy her and her kind. And in the final apocalyptic battle, her survival will depend on whether all humans are bigots -- or all bigots are human . . .
Review style: I'm dropping the thumbs up/thumbs down format because I want to DISCUSS the book, not compartmentalize it. And because it's a book club pick, there will absolutely be spoilers, so if you haven't finished reading or haven't started, jump down to "My Rating." Everyone else, onward!
Last night, I finished up my review and found myself largely dissatisfied with it. But rather than berating myself, I decided to sleep on the review and look at some other reviews online to see if I couldn't find my focus and figure out what was bugging me about my own review and why (other than the fact I finished reading the book in early February and I'm just NOW putting my thoughts to paper. Bad Calico, bad!).
After reading other reviews, I've come up with a special format for this discussion, and you are welcome (BUT NOT REQUIRED) to tackle these very questions in your comments.
1) Is this the first Octavia E. Butler book you've read? If so, how does it compare to her other work?
Clearly, this is not my first go at Butler. I feel pretty comfortable with her writing, her themes, her voice, and the way she does everything she can to make her readers uncomfortable and still tell a rocking story. My first two experiences can be found in the Seed to Harvest omnibus, the stories Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind. I fell in love with Butler's work with Wild Seed, the very first book of hers I read, and sadly, the day I finished reading Wild Seed was the very day she died. How creepy is that? In some ways, this weird little irony has conflated her into a legend in my eyes, and there's a biased part of me that feels she can do no wrong.
That said, Kindred did not hit me as strongly as it did many of my book club readers last year. And to date, I think my absolute favorite work of hers is Lilith's Brood, which some of you will be reading for Dreams & Speculations' June selection.
2) How did you like Butler's take on the vampire myth? Do you think she tried too hard to be different?
I, personally, loved Butler's take. I liked that she took the roots of the myth and sort of extrapolated her own species, and it was more than just "we're sparkly in the sunlight." No, Butler created her own culture, on how mating works between members of the species, she created sexual politics, and she used those myths to create the seed for her story: what happens when an Ina has been genetically tinkered with and can walk in daylight? All of this fascinated me, and had me shaking my head a bit too, because some of the communal living she describes reminds me of an idea I had for my own vampire novel. :)
Some reviewers found Butler's stressing of differences to be heavy-handed, like she was trying too hard to show the reader that HER vampires were DIFFERENT. Personally, that's not something I noticed. It made sense in context that Shori had no memory, so she researched and found what anyone would find online, so when she learned something new, the comparisons to the myth made sense to me. Sure, maybe she could've trusted her reader more to understand that what she was doing was DIFFERENT than your typical vampire story, but it never rubbed me the wrong way.
3) How did the writing style work for you?
This is interesting, as readers who aren't fond of Butler's work can't understand those of us who praise her work because they find her writing to be one dimensional, too straight-forward, rather simple. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing in this book that I would describe as lush, beautiful prose. Butler's just not that kind of writer. And the typos in my copy made it really difficult to admire the prose even if I wanted. Y'all, the TYPOS. They were HORRIBLE. Stuff like this you can't immediately blame the writer for either, because books pass through several hands before the public gets to them, and a lot of the typos could've been made by the copy editor or someone else. Regardless, whoever made them should be ashamed, but the person who should be more ashamed is the editor who let it slip by. Seriously. This is just sloppy editing, and it doesn't matter who made the typos to begin with.
Typos aside, like I said, I've never turned to Butler for lush, beautiful prose. Her straight-forward method of storytelling works for me, because she gives me so much in terms of content and ideas that I'm not worried about her sentence structure or any of that. The prose (save the typos) doesn't get in the way of the story, which allows me to focus on the bigger issues.
That said, even the best of Butler's work isn't exactly Catherynne M. Valente, but the fact remains that Butler's prose allows you to engage in the ideas, and that's an important thing.
4) Let's talk about sex. What worked? What didn't? What exactly is Butler trying to say here?
I'm still debating the necessity of having Shori appear as a child, even though mentally, she's quite old. Yet her amnesia made her like a child once more. She's no innocent, but I think that Butler chose Shori's age mostly for shock value: she doesn't do anything half-assed when it comes to forcing her readers to think outside the box when it comes to sex and sexual preferences, and since I've read enough of her work, this doesn't surprise me, nor does it make me overly uncomfortable. If this had been my first Butler book, then yeah, I might've flipped out a bit, but it wasn't, so I didn't. I knew Butler had something up her sleeve, that Shori wasn't truly the child she appeared to be (I knew she was a vampire from the get-go) so I wasn't all that squicked out.
But think about the creepy factor of other child vampires. You've got the Eli from Let the Right One In (the film I've seen, as well as its American adaptation, but I haven't read the book), and then there's Claudia from Interview with the Vampire (where I've seen the film and read the book). These vampires are far older than their bodies suggest, so mature behavior of all sorts isn't surprising. More to the point, it adds to the creepy factor, that a child can be so adult, so violent, despite the apparent age.
Shori's not violent or creepy. It's only the actions she chooses to take that someones gives the reader a ill feeling in the tummy. The sex is supposed to make the reader uncomfortable, and I think it's one of the methods Butler is pushing the envelope of her world-building. Human taboos mean nothing to the Ina: they have their own laws about sex between other Ina and that's what's important. How Ina treat their humans is something completely different, and there's a few ways to look at it: if humans are pets, then Shori and other Ina are committing what is essentially bestiality (aka, if we humans had sexual relations with our own pets), which is pretty damn disturbing. On the other hand, if the Ina are meant to be looked at as a different race of human that's not biologically compatible in regards to breeding, well, then one can say that Ina or not, we're all human, and therefore give in to the desires.
Butler's also creating something of a utopia, at least from Shori's perspective. The good guys care nothing for skin color (I love all cats the same regardless of the color of their fur, that sort of thing), and even gender is meaningless to the Ina: all humans deserve love, and that physical love is what strengthens the bond between Ina and symbiont, creates an addiction and dependence that doesn't get explored near enough, but I'll get to that little tidbit later. The point is, Shori's view is that of a utopian, where race and gender don't matter, we're all equal. It's not surprising she carries that view, given that she pushes the borders of Mary Sue-ism herself, and I say pushes instead of crosses because in my book, a Mary Sue must be a character the reader cannot stand. For some of you, I bet Shori's a Mary Sue. Me, not so much.
But ultimately, what I'm saying here is that what Butler did worked for me. I'm not quite concerned with what she's saying with it either, though it does raise the question: should children be looked at as sexual creatures in their own right? That may not be a question Butler meant to raise (seriously, I think she's just trying to force the reader to think outside of the sexual box) but it does make one wonder.
5) How satisfying is it?
I've heard a couple of things about this book from a couple of different sources. 1) That Butler wrote this book on a lark and therefore didn't take it as seriously as she did her previous works and 2) that Butler meant for this to be the start of a series or trilogy.
Both options, no matter how true or not, would go a long way in explaining the somewhat abrupt ending and the lack of resolution to certain plot points, namely Wayne's conflict over whether or not he's simply addicted to Shori and it's her venom making him feel so good. It could go either way, as he does express irritation and dissatisfaction and jealousy when around the other symbionts, yet, he ignored orders to stay away from her at the end, trusting in their relationship and link that she wouldn't bite him out of ravenous hunger (but maybe he wanted to die and this was a suicide mission? Nah, I think he would've reacted differently to her waking if that were the case).
There's also the exploration of racism, which really doesn't introduce anything new in terms of exploration of the issue. Rather, it reiterates a fact of life, that racism still exists, that people hate the Other and some people will never get over the Other in their life, that they'll do anything to eliminate it and keep the status quo. I think we got a decent story in that regard, especially during the trial when masks slipped and plots were uncovered. The realization that this happened not just because Shori's families were dabbling in genetics (that could've been stopped ahead of time), but because the resulting offspring were black is very telling, and it is, despite not being "new," a fascinating dialogue to have in a book of this nature. Who would've thought that vampires would make a solid platform to discuss race relations?
This worked for me, but I have to be honest in that I'm an unabashed Butler fangirl, and it makes it really hard for me to criticize her work. Sure, I can try to be objective all day long, but it's hard for me to read something of hers and think it's just awful, because no matter what she does, she manages to grab my attention.
My Rating
Must Read: I've yet to be disappointed by a Butler novel, because she always gives me fascinating world-building and sexual and racial politics that really give me food for thought. Fledgling is no different, and once the book gets going, it's a fascinating read. I had this book finished in a day, and then spent many days afterwards just thinking about it and admiring what Butler does with it. That being said, I'm not convinced this is the best place for the Butler newbie to start. It's not a bad place, mind you, but Butler sets out to shock and freak readers out, and if you haven't seen some of the things she does in her other works, you might be turned off from her fiction for good. Still, it's a good read, and if you're a fan of Butler's work, how can you not tune in to see how she handles the vampire myth?
Buy or Borrow: Buy, buy, buy! Of course, if you've never read Butler before, you may want to borrow from the library first just to make sure she doesn't scare the bejeezus out of you, but once you fall in love with her work? BUY-BUY-BUY!!!!
Cover Commentary: I love this cover, especially in comparison to the original hardcover cover release, which you can see here. Not that the original cover art was bad, but I think the trade paperback art has a little more mystery is a little more true to the story. The burnt edges of the gown, the obvious fact our main character is a person of color: this cover has always been compelling to me. It's simple and elegant.
More Reviews: Check out the reviews book club participants have posted! If you reviewed this book but are not featured here, please comment below with a link to your review and I'll add it below.
abooksellerblog: Review Here
intoyourlungs: Review Here
maibyers: Review Here
phoenixfalls: Review Here
pling: Review Here
rocalisa: Review Here
starmetal_oak: Review Here
shel99: Review Here
talekyn: Review Here
Book Club Poll: The poll is going to be a little different than in recent years. First off, if you're not officially participating in the book club, please do not feel obligated to answer the poll. Second, there's a lot of book club participants who are NOT on LJ and I want to make sure they're able to respond appropriately since I'm tracking for points. Because I'm evil like that. So if you're a book clubber, whether you read the book or not, please click the link below!
Click here to take the Fledgling poll!
If you started the book but couldn't finish it, please comment and talk about the reasons why. What turned you off from the book? How far did you go before throwing in the towel?
And as you already know, the March Book Club selection is Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go. Some of you may have started it already, but if need additional details on the title, just click here. Sign up for the 2011 Alphabet Soup Challenge!
Click here