Book Review: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler; Photo from amazon.com

Brief Synopsis: The story follows Lauren Olamina, someone cursed with "hyperempathy", through her troubled world and eventually out into the wilderness. Lauren's hyperempathy stems from her birth mother's abuse of a legal drug; it causes her to feel the pain of others around her, sometimes to a crippling degree. She lives in a near future suburb of Los Angeles in a walled community to protect her tiny neighborhood from the poverty and depravity outside. The wall, however, isn't really effective at keeping the decay out, so in a moment Lauren's world is literally burnt to the ground. She decides to leave, something she had been planning anyway, to head north in search of something better. Through a stunning stroke of luck, Lauren meets two other survivors from her little walled village and takes them with her, forming the core of her group, a group that will be based on the new religion Lauren worked out called Earthseed. As the group travels north through California, they take on more refugees with stories similar to their own (or worse) and finally reach the land that will be the new home for the group and the Earthseed community.

(NOTE: SPOILERS AHOY!!)

Review: I am a big fan of Octavia E. Butler, and I think she was an amazingly talented writer as well as a pioneer in science fiction. It is really a shame that she wasn't more prolific, but that's neither here nor there. Parable of the Sower was written in the latter half of her career, and most of the other things I have read from her are from earlier in her career. The earlier works do share a lot of the same themes as Parable, especially slavery. Butler's dystopian view of the near future is wholly believable and frightening in it's possibility. (Aside: In my opinion, a dystopia only works if the world is believable or possible, and good writers are able to make them both.) Parable is well-written and solid, and the narrative style really lends to the type of story that Butler is telling. It wasn't hard to follow the journal-entry style, and most readers won't miss the transitions that other novels told in a straight-forward narrative style would have. Overall, the very personal style of narration makes Lauren a much more human character and seeing the experiences in a broken-down world through her eyes really adds to the credibility of the world that Butler created. My only REAL criticism of this novel is that I felt rather uneasy with 18-year-old Lauren shacking up with 57-year-old Bankole, especially considering the seeming lack of closure with losing her father, whom Bankole has a lot in common with. Otherwise, Parable is a solid novel and I look forward to reading the follow-up, Parable of the Talents. It would have made a really great three- or five-part epic sci-fi series, so it is sad that Butler passed away before she could write more of the Earthseed saga.

Bottom Line: B+
Recommended for: Fans of solid dystopic worlds, fans of female-centered sci-fi