[ Books ] 'Kindred' by Octavia Butler
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book really hit me. I kept trying to reassure myself 'this is made up, it's fiction' but then you think again -things like these happened to real people and in some parts of the world still do. It was probably a lot worse than what we read in the book, having recently learnt that Maryland was supposed to be a more liberal state in relation to slavery.
The characters are believable, they feel real and human in most cases and you care for them and their fate. The time-travel device is by now well worn and I for one am grateful that it's not explained in the book, partly because there is no possible scientific explanation and when sci-fi tries to explain something like this it often gets in a horrible muddle (Star Trek Discovery, I'm looking at you..). It is, at any rate, more history-fiction or sociology-fiction than science fiction and it is a very powerful book that I very much recommend.
This was March's set book for Bibliogoth. We had already read and discussed another book by Octavia Butler in Bibliogoth ('Dawn', the first in the Lilith's Brood series) and I already knew I liked her writing. This very much confirms that.
View all my reviews
I'm on Dreamwidth at http://flaviomatani.dreamwidth.org/ -do follow me there if you can.