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Fledgling

3.9 of 5 stars 3.90 · rating details · 6,198 ratings · 946 reviews

Fledgling, Octavia Butler's new novel after a seven year break, is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly inhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted--and still wan...more

Paperback, 310 pages

Published January 2nd 2007 by Grand Central Publishing (first published 2005)

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Best Adult Vampire Books

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The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

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May 01, 2011 Aerin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, vampires, pnw

Dispatch from page 137:

I always start out sort of liking Butler's books, but with only two exceptions so far (the Parable books, which I loved unreservedly), by the time I get a hundred pages or so in, that fondness has soured into vague squick and then visceral disgust. And then eventually I have to decide whether I want to - whether I CAN - finish the book.

And when I say disgust, I mean a very specific, almost physical reaction. It's not that I don't like the stories, and it's not that Butler...more

29 likes · like · see review

Nov 30, 2009 jo rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: mike, simon

Shelves: african-american, queer, kids, spec-fantasy-sf, blew-my-mind, vampires, books-i-teach

*** this review has spoilers that will do irreversible damage to those who have not read the book, is long, and is, i'm afraid, rather academic in tone, because i just think that way. be warned. ***

Fledgling opens with a birth scene of sorts. a little girl (we don’t yet know that she’s a little girl, but find out soon enough) wakes up in a cave in tremendous physical pain. her body is badly injured, more, we gather from the description, than a human being would be able to survive. she’s covered...more

18 likes · like · see review

Sep 27, 2007 Schnaucl rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, horror, library, read_2007, september, glbt

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Warning: This review contains large spoilers

This was a very disturbing read. Shori is Ina (vampire) and has the mind of a 54 year old but she has the body of a child of 11 or 12. So when she has sex with adults it felt like pedophilia to me, especially since the first person she had sex with expressed a sexual interest before her true age was known. Although the sex was never graphic it still made me very uncomfortable, especially since there were references to how her body was undeveloped. And...more Warning: This review contains large spoilers

This was a very disturbing read. Shori is Ina (vampire) and has the mind of a 54 year old but she has the body of a child of 11 or 12. So when she has sex with adults it felt like pedophilia to me, especially since the first person she had sex with expressed a sexual interest before her true age was known. Although the sex was never graphic it still made me very uncomfortable, especially since there were references to how her body was undeveloped. And even though her first partner eventually learned her true age, it's not clear to me that her subsequent partners knew. Additionally, because of her memory loss although she was 54 she was still a child by Ina standards and felt very childlike to me.

Sex aside, the relationship between Ina and Symbiont is problematic. On a purely linguistic level, I don't like the term "Symbiont." It sounds very clinical and devoid of the affection that's supposed to be there.

On an emotional level I had a strong negative reaction to the relationship. It seems inexcusably unfair to me for Shori to bite someone, get them almost addicted to her and then ask if they want to stay with her and tell them what that entails. There is some leeway with Theodora and Wright because she didn't know any better, and others from the Ina community already know what they're getting into. But I get the impression she'd still bite then ask rather than being upfront about the whole thing when the human's mind really isn't under any outside influence and can objectively make a decision. It's not fair to take away a person's objectivity and then ask if she wants to join with her.

I was also disturbed the way humans were treated. Even though Shori and her extended family were supposedly progressive in that sense, they were still very condescending to the humans. They were treated more like pets or slaves. They had whatever they wanted, but it was clearly with a sense of indulgence, almost "isn't that cute." I have no doubt that Shori loves and needed her symbiont family but the power imbalance is so great that I can't agree with that relationship. Ina can make humans do whatever they want with no regard for what their humans want and humans just have to trust that their Ina won't abuse them.

And while the antagonists claim that the killing of Shori's symbiont is not a big deal because Shori herself isn't fully Ina, Shori's response, that she should be allowed to kill one of the antagonist's symbiont's suggests that she doesn't view them as entirely equal either. I'm sure she never expected the other Ina to agree to it, but what if she had? Would she really go through with it and kill an innocent human?

All that made me so uncomfortable that the actual focus which was more about co-mingling human and Ina genetics (and Caucasian and African-American) seemed secondary. I'm still not really clear on whether the fact that Shori is black was supposed to be an issue. The antagonists made reference to her race a few times but I thought their real issue was the mingling of Ina and human genetic material. Obviously there are some parallels with the way people in this country once thought of blacks as closer to animals than human but the whole section on why the Ina family was after her was so short that dealing with those issues didn't really happen until 3/4 of the book was already finished so there wasn't an opportunity to explore them in any real depth.(less)

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May 14, 2012 Rita rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: in-my-home-library, vampires, my-reviews, 2011, fiction, 2-stars, recommended-by-others

*** THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS ***
For a long time I have been wanting to read a novel by Octavia E. Butler. Her last book, Fledgling, somehow seemed to be the right first choice for me, as I've always had a thing for vampire-stories.

I ordered the book from a local book store and waited for days in eager anticipation for it's arrival. The book arrived and I read it. The first few pages seemed promising, for its premise was different than most other vampire books that I have read. The boo...more *** THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS ***
For a long time I have been wanting to read a novel by Octavia E. Butler. Her last book, Fledgling, somehow seemed to be the right first choice for me, as I've always had a thing for vampire-stories.

I ordered the book from a local book store and waited for days in eager anticipation for it's arrival. The book arrived and I read it. The first few pages seemed promising, for its premise was different than most other vampire books that I have read. The book quickly became a disappointment to me (to put it mildly), as it touched on a subject that I find both disgusting and distracting.

The main character, Shori, is a 53-year old female vampire that suffers from amnesia. Shori is however not like other vampires, she is black (which for me is pointless as I have always been racially unbiased - she could have been purple for all that I cared), she is not "undead" or some fantastical strange mutation. She belongs to a different species that developed side by side with the humans. She does not look like other vampires of her species, for she physically looks like a 9-11 year old human child, although she certainly doesn't act like one. I can accept that, for who's to say that the physical development of a vampire child follows that of a human? Shori has several symbionts that she shares her life with and whom she feeds from, for her species is not a merciless bloodthirsty killer.

What I could not accept, enjoy or even tolerate, was the fact that Shori is a sexually active child. She is not sexually active with children of her own species (that, to a certain extend I could have "understood"), but she has sex with adult men and women of the human species, with individuals who seemingly have no qualms and troubles of having sex with what (appears to be) a human child. It's bizarre at best, utterly disgusting and perverted at worst. I don't get the point of this pseudo-paedophilia, I really don't see where Butler wants to go with this.

Because I enjoyed other aspects of this book I continued reading; I had an expectation that Butler had a larger plan with this pseudo-paedophilia, that there was some point that she was trying to make, but frankly I never saw it. IF there even was a point with it, for Butler herself has been known to have said that this book was meant as a lark, a joke. But sex with children, even if consensual, is no joke: it's just plain wrong. Frankly, I am amazed how any publisher would chose to publish it in the form that it is today.

I hope that her other works are better than this.(less)

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aPriL MEOWS often with scratching I thought this was a self-indulgent book. I listened to it on audiobook, and I kept thinking she was going to make some *statement*, like women's righ...more
May 16, 2012 10:50am

Rita Hey April, thank you for your thoughtful comment. :)

Honestly I don't know - I also expected some big revelation and have the proverbial "aha"-moment...more
May 16, 2012 01:08pm

aPriL MEOWS often with scratching It WAS bad to listen to. I did it in chunks of time while on my daily walk. After a few days, I only listened to it on days it was raining. I kept thi...more
May 16, 2012 02:07pm

Feb 20, 2009 Kiri rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Kiri by: my sci-fi book club

Shelves: book-club

The most interesting thing about this book is its conception of "vampires" as a second intelligent species that lives in symbiosis with humans -- unable to "turn" them, naturally, since it's a species thing (as one character remarks, if a dog bites a man, no one expects the man to turn into a dog). The bite includes "venom" which has a strongly pleasurable (and addictive) effect on the person bitten.

The story revolves around Shori, a vampire who wakes up near death from burns and physical damage...more The most interesting thing about this book is its conception of "vampires" as a second intelligent species that lives in symbiosis with humans -- unable to "turn" them, naturally, since it's a species thing (as one character remarks, if a dog bites a man, no one expects the man to turn into a dog). The bite includes "venom" which has a strongly pleasurable (and addictive) effect on the person bitten.

The story revolves around Shori, a vampire who wakes up near death from burns and physical damage, with absolutely no memory of how she ended up like that. We follow her as she heals, meets people, rediscovers her past -- and pursues judgment against those who almost destroyed her. Despite the tired familiarity of the amnesiac narrator, the plot is engaging and culminates in a fascinating three-day trial in which justice will be done. Her lack of memory allows us to follow along as she rediscovers what it means to be a vampire ("Ina").

On the other hand, the characterization is remarkably poor. The main character feels quite real, but not necessarily sympathetic or, well, that interesting. I feel like I'm *supposed* to pity/empathize with her, but I don't really. The supporting cast is much more poorly drawn. It's a bad sign when I can't keep anyone's names straight, especially when they are people who are supposed be super-important and "treasured" by Shori. (She's narrating -- why can't I tell who she's thinking about?) None of her "symbionts" have any particularly distinguishing characteristics, even her "first" who is supposed to be some passionate attachment of hers. Does he have a back story? Friends? Hobbies? No. He's just repeatedly described as "hairy" and "jealous", and he tags along wherever she goes. Uninteresting.

The other Ina have more potential to be interesting -- some are several hundred years old, which is hinted at but not explored in this book. (Surely they'd have some interesting things to say about the colonization of America, if nothing else?) Again, it's very difficult to tell them apart, especially siblings from the same family. They're just names -- they have little or no distinguishing characteristics. It feels like Butler realized she had to people her book with lots of people (Ina live in groups, and each one requires 5-10 symbionts to sustain them with blood), but then got tired or uninterested in fleshing them out as people. Ironically, one theme throughout is that some Ina treat their symbionts just as tools, not as intelligent beings -- but Butler effectively does the same thing by picturing them as cardboard cutouts (she also refers to them as groups of things all alike, e.g., "the symbionts all felt X").

Overall, it was fun to read -- but not amazing literature. (less)

7 likes · like · see review

Nov 05, 2008 Kasia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sex-and-erotica, vampires, dystopia, feminist, appreciated-not-enjoyed

It wasn't an easy read, pushed me out of my comfort zone. Yet, I found it rather and surprisingly profound (in an odd way). It's not a typical vampire flick, more like a Sci-fi/anthropology hybrid...

5 likes · like · see review

Oct 24, 2012 Ian rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, society, philosophy, mystery, mythology, horror, halloween-2012

Time to give Butler another chance! Will she manage to avoid the Manichaean "Male = Bad. Female = Good." dynamic of Wild Seed? Only time will tell! But this stand-alone novel is about vampires and fits in perfectly with my goal for October.

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Well, a remarkable dearth of misandry! In its place was a really, really, really creepy story about how healthy and natural pedophilia can be. In context it makes sense, and technically the pre-pubescent girl was a 50 year-old member of an entirely differe...more

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Oct 06, 2010 TheFountainPenDiva rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sub-genre-bw-wm-romance, characters-female-vampires, characters-black-heroines, genre-science-fiction, characters-vampires, authors-octavia-butler-rocks

Firstly, I wish there was a way to give this novel TEN STARS because like every single book she's ever written, it is a masterpiece of surperb writing, compelling characters and thought-provoking themes like sex, race and class - issues seldom dealt with in even the finest speculative fiction.

Only in the hands of a skilled author could new life be breathed into the quickly becoming stale vampire genre, and Ms. Butler succeeds where so many others fail. Anyone looking for Anne Rice will be sadly...more Firstly, I wish there was a way to give this novel TEN STARS because like every single book she's ever written, it is a masterpiece of surperb writing, compelling characters and thought-provoking themes like sex, race and class - issues seldom dealt with in even the finest speculative fiction.

Only in the hands of a skilled author could new life be breathed into the quickly becoming stale vampire genre, and Ms. Butler succeeds where so many others fail. Anyone looking for Anne Rice will be sadly disappointed.

Shori, the novel's protagonist, is a complex creature. She is no brooding Louis nor an amoral Lestat, but a 53 year-old woman who outwardly looks like a ten year-old girl. When we first meet her, she is gravely injured and has no memory of where she is or even who she is. Slowly emerging from her place of hiding, she is picked up by a young man named Wright, who takes her home and cares for her. What follows from there is guaranteed to play with one's perceptions of age and sexuality and though as a reader we are more than aware of Shori's true age (and Ms. Butler writes Shori with such skill, there is no way to mistake her for anything but her true age), as a reader we are gently nudged into accepting their relationship without any qualm, especially when Shori and Wright make love. Instead of playing to shock value or prurience, the eroticism between Shori and Wright is handled wonderfully.

As the novel progresses, Shori learns her true heritage - that she is Ina, a race of vampires whose beginnings are swathed in mystery. She learns that she is the first of her kind, her dark skin allows her to go into the sunlight, something the other Ina cannot do. She also learns the ways of her people - of keeping humans (known as symbionts or syms) not merely as sustenance, but as companions and lovers. Kinship figures prominently in Ina and Sym society, and both live together in a somewhat utopian existence. There are questions of whom needs whom the most - Ina or syms - and the subtle threads of what could be viewed as a co-dependent relationship. Ina may live long, but they need not only the blood, but the vitality of their syms to exist. The syms become addicted to a toxin in the Ina's bodies that keep them young and free of disease.

As we learn later, and not surprising, there is also deep-seated prejudice amongst the Ina, who may pretend to have progressed beyond such petty concerns as racism, and there are those who do not see Shori as being one of them, merely a genetic experiment.

Fledgling is a multihued tapestry of a novel, a world of darkness and light that I didn't want to leave. Shori is a strong, resourceful and yet manages to engage us readers with her humanity. It's one of those novels that left me feeling as if Shori, Wright and all of the characters truly existed.
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Mar 14, 2013 Shanae rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: black-studies, books-about-women, learn-something, science-fiction, favorites, women-writers, to-read-again

I absolutely love Octavia Butler. She is by far one of the most captivating novelists I've experienced. And I say experience because each world she creates in her novel is like a mini-vacation -- a trip elsewhere, someplace fascinating, interesting, unbelievable and likely at the same time.

"Fledgling" is the story of a young, African American vampire hybrid with human qualities that morphs into a story about race, age, and sexism in this underground and unknown society in America, at least that...more

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Sep 26, 2008 Ruth rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Tenli

Octavia Butler is dead (in 2006, actually), long live Octavia Butler. There are few authors who have taught me more about what it means to be human.

Her stories don't teach with luxurious literary language or complex psychological portraits. The earlier novels are a little bit wooden, with characters that sometimes seem like cardboard cut-outs. But rarely have I found stories so LOADED down with ideas that there's barely time to explore one before the next one bursts upon me. Her stories teach th...more Octavia Butler is dead (in 2006, actually), long live Octavia Butler. There are few authors who have taught me more about what it means to be human.

Her stories don't teach with luxurious literary language or complex psychological portraits. The earlier novels are a little bit wooden, with characters that sometimes seem like cardboard cut-outs. But rarely have I found stories so LOADED down with ideas that there's barely time to explore one before the next one bursts upon me. Her stories teach through the ancient arts of analogy, metaphor and parable.

She has given me so many images of human-ness, refracted through her prism of fantasy and science fiction. Here are a few that I still ponder, years after reading them:

That adolescence is a life-threatening "transition," and not all beings survive the intensity of the transformation. All need, though not all receive, the intense, focused, physical presence and mentoring of an adult who has successfully navigated the change, and still remembers how hard it was.

In Fledgling, the heroine, Shori, is a black, female, amnesiac, child-sized vampire with some human DNA, as well--how many more levels outside the "norm" could she be? Her journey to learn who she is and what she believes in is a beautiful analogy for each of our search to define ourselves, what we can tolerate, who our tribe is, and how we can stand up against injustice.

Speaking of heroines, Butler has left us a gallery of fascinating, powerful-yet-disempowered female beings, all of whom have to live with enormous physical danger, as well as profound social inequality. Every time I read her stories I learn more about how it feels to live as the victim of social injustice and racism, and also what it means to cleave to your own values and vision. So many of our contemporary myths are manufactured by white, male-dominated Hollywood.

Here's a glimpse of Butler's gallery of heroes:

a vampire with the ability to sustain a web of complex, interdependent symbiotic relationships that include multiple mates (polyamory) and inter-species love;

a super-hero whose gift is an almost unimaginable level of--get ready now--not strength, not speed, not the power to destroy, but--empathy.

a nurturing, insect-like creature with multiple arms that serves as a gestational pod for humans

In The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of The Talents, Butler suggests that the only way to keep the human race from destroying itself through tribal warfare is to find a vision--a narrative--big enough to harness everyone's energy and turn it outwards. Butler proposed a "space race" as an example of an expansive-enough vision to provide that focus. I wonder if saving this planet could serve the same purpose, and provide more obvious and immediate rewards: like survival.

It was also in the Parables that she painted a portrait of a society in which only the ultra-rich could afford the gasoline and bodyguards necessary to drive (are we there yet?)--everyone else used the super-highways as enormous sidewalks, where the strong preyed on the weak and no one was safe.

What will I do now that I've read all her books? It's simple: Start re-reading them.

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Jul 23, 2008 Ceridwen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, necrophilia, lgbt

I was saddened to discover that Butler died in 2006, and that this was her last novel. I heard her read maybe ten years ago, and was profoundly impressed.

This is a vampire story, but in typical Butler fashion. she rearranges the vampire metaphors to speak strongly to race, sex, privilege and the like. It's a first person narrative, told from the perspective of a young vampire who's lost her memory in a terrible attack. The first person thing is tricky, because the narrator often doesn't freak o...more I was saddened to discover that Butler died in 2006, and that this was her last novel. I heard her read maybe ten years ago, and was profoundly impressed.

This is a vampire story, but in typical Butler fashion. she rearranges the vampire metaphors to speak strongly to race, sex, privilege and the like. It's a first person narrative, told from the perspective of a young vampire who's lost her memory in a terrible attack. The first person thing is tricky, because the narrator often doesn't freak out about the things I find deeply disquieting. I'm still not sure what I think about certain choices, but partially because Butler made those choices to upset me, and left me swinging in the air. There is no narrator-ly gloss on the events, which is a fascinating kind of restraint.

Butler's vampires are a separate species. We cannot turn into them or they into us. They are predators. Often, when authors even have a real sense of the vampire's predatory nature (and Twilight does NOT count) they turn them into beasties, with red teeth and the smell of the charnel house. I think we forget that we are predators, really the best on the planet, the killingest thing that nature has produced. You can go out and find thousands of individual instances where this is not true, but hunting culture is full of love and respect for the animal, one that Butler twists in a seriously satisfying way.

And that's not even getting into animal husbandry. Even the term itself, the source of countless immature puns, highlights our very real marriage with the source of our food, a complex nexus of love and sex and blood and death. Due to the first person thing, I think, I was tricked into identifying with the vampire. Late in the novel, I flipped, when the masks slipped, and I saw myself as one of the cattle, collected, tagged, loved, but ultimately a non-actor, a creature whose life could be manipulated. The predator is in charge; it's prey is not.

As I think may be usual for me reading Butler's stuff, I loved her ideas while not being that excited by her prose. It's stiff, sort of, topical, maybe, with clunky dialogue and iffy characterization. The big vampire conference/trial felt done-before or Perry Masonish or something, and left me cold. I'm just bereft though, that Butler died before she could finish this series, as this book charts some interesting territory, and ends in an incompleteness that is intentional, but now historically frustrating. What were you going to do next, Octavia?

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Feb 20, 2008 Sam Grace rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, genre, she-has-eggs, poc, african-american, fantastical

The librarian pushed it on me when they didn't have the Parable of the Sower on hand. Why not?

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Actually, I ended up deciding not to keep reading. Too much bad stuff for me to look past when I'm not totally hooked on the writing or the topics. Not enough for me to NOT recommend it, but not enough to keep me reading either.

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It turns out that this book - young chick vampires - falls squarely into a genre I tend to really like. That she writes it more like traditional fiction only makes it better....more

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Sep 16, 2010 Alex Telander rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-in-2007

FLEDGLING BY OCTAVIA E. BUTLER: In Fledgling, renowned science fiction author Octavia E. Butler, who sadly passed away last year, reinvents the idea of the vampire and their existence in history, putting her own original slant on it. While the book is complete in its rounded story, one is left wanting more of this very original creation on an archetype.

The book opens with what can only be termed an uncomfortable situation, at the very least. From the viewpoint of the main character, Shori, who h...more FLEDGLING BY OCTAVIA E. BUTLER: In Fledgling, renowned science fiction author Octavia E. Butler, who sadly passed away last year, reinvents the idea of the vampire and their existence in history, putting her own original slant on it. While the book is complete in its rounded story, one is left wanting more of this very original creation on an archetype.

The book opens with what can only be termed an uncomfortable situation, at the very least. From the viewpoint of the main character, Shori, who has been horribly disfigured by some terrible accident, the reader learns she is a vampire as the character comes to realize this herself, feeding off another, and healing incredibly fast. She has also forgotten everything about herself and her history, and with the reader, slowly learns about this. She then finds herself what is termed a symbiont, which is one who provides a regular blood source to the vampires known as Ina. The man, brought under the power of Shori and the hypnotic venom in her bite, essentially falls in love with her and their relationship begins at full steam, even though Shori appears no older than a ten year old black girl, and he an adult. The reader is left feeling very uncomfortable about this Lolitaesque relationship.

Eventually, when Shori confronts the place of her accident and meets other Ina, the full story is revealed. It is thought that she and her whole family of vampires and symbionts were all killed in this terrible attack. The reason was that she was the result of a genetic experiment to make it possible for vampires to brave the sun. The result was successful, with Shori being able to travel during the day – although she must remain fully covered and will suffer burns. Nevertheless, there is someone who feels that Shori is an abomination and must be destroyed.

It is when this second group of Ina are killed with two symbionts surviving, that Shori and her group flees to another Ina family in California where she finds further answers. And when this group is then attacked, but due to Shori’s preparation, thwarts the attack and captures three of them, all the answers are revealed. Behind the attacks are a large family in Los Angeles who have always hated the idea of meddling with the pure race of the Ina. The book pushes forth its message here with the idea that these ancient Ina are angry not so much at Shori for being black, but at her genetically engineered nature of mixing human genes and Ina genes; they no longer consider her Ina, no longer pure.

Then in a three-day ceremony that harkens back to every form of town government and religious ritual, a judicial gathering is convened with members of many families of Ina represented, while the complete family of those who are supposedly behind the killings are put on trial. The question is whether the jury will side with a small black girl who remembers nothing of her past and heritage, or with the proud and ancient Ina family who have helped so many.

Butler skillfully and subtly asks questions of race and genetic alteration: what it is to be human, or in this case Ina, and how we as people see that, and what value we place on it. In a time when a cloned and/or genetically engineered human is not so much a future nightmare, but a worry we all wait to read about in the newspapers every day, Fledgling certainly does its job in helping those who are unsure on these matters make decision.

For more book reviews, and author interviews, go to BookBanter.(less)

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Oct 05, 2007 Johanna rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: vampire fans, people who aren't easily squicked out

The sad thing about this book is that it is very clearly supposed to be one in a series; unfortunately, Butler died after writing this book. That makes it hard to read because you immediately become attached to Shori, much like the people in the book become attached to her. This book is AMAZING. It introduces the Ina and by doing so, Butler created a new branch of vampire lore--vampires who are not evil, do not kill to feed, who live with families of several humans they feed on and who they love...more

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May 15, 2007 helena rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

so i ordered two copies of this book in may of 2006 -- one for me, and one for my friend cyndi, who nurtures a guilty pleasure in science fiction and trashy vampire novels. i meant to give cyndi hers before she left for china, so she would have something to read on the plane. unfortunately, i forgot, so it will be a homecoming present for her when she returns later this week.

in may, i finally started reading my copy of 'fledgling,' which i consumed with the same voracious eagerness as the vampir...more

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Feb 02, 2009 Sara rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: female-authors, fiction, sci-fi-fantasy

I just barely made myself finish this. I thought the writing style was fairly dull, the social observations not nearly as interesting or original as the reviews I read had suggested, and at least the edition I read was really poorly edited for typos and punctuation. I did a lot of eye rolling at this one.

10 likes · like · see review

Dec 18, 2012 Carole rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-from-public-library

Along with Robin McKinley's "Sunshine", this is my favorite vampire novel. It isn't even the best of Butler's works, but because it stands alone and isn't part of a series like so many of her other works, it's almost more intense and captivating. Like all of her novels, it approaches sexuality, power imbalances, and burgeoning self-awareness with a frighteningly intimate narrative approach that no other author can match. Highly recommended.

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Aug 14, 2010 Martin Kee rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

While this book starts out strong, it quickly slips into long, drawn-out exposition on vampire politics, family history and mating habits. The writing, while clean, feels dry and flavorless. It was a struggle to get to the end.

5 likes · like · see review

Jun 19, 2008 G (galen) rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy-sci-fi

A truly amazing alternate look at vampires.

Like all of Butler's novels the themes in this book range deep and wide hitting on prejudice, genetic engineering, sexuality, political maneuvering, etc...

what if Vampires didn't just feed on humans... what if a symbiotic relationship between the two species was required and mutually beneficial?

(This was a much more satisfying re-interpretation of Vampire lore than Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series)

2 likes · like · see review

Feb 08, 2009 Hoby rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

I was impressed with her fresh fictionalized world, very convincing in its sci-fi plausibility. Her ideas are wonderful, as are the major plot points and head-on flirts with all kinds of taboo.

There were also many points where her situations became very tangible scenes in my mind.. where I could imagine action happening, me as the main character, feeling how Shori felt.. completely sucked in to the character.

It was though, an embarrassing work to read. The storytelling was very often kind of.. s...more

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Dec 21, 2008 Ryan Mishap rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-fantasy

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jun 02, 2013 Sarah Ellen Rogers rated it 2 of 5 stars

Things I liked about this book: it's about a tiny black girl vampire (cool), and it reimagines the relationship between vampires and humans as a collective form of symbiotic living (cool).

Things I didn't like: main character is a total Mary Sue (she's smart, she's got super duper powers even amongst vampires, she has no flaws, everyone is totally impressed by her, loves her, finds her irresistibly attractive, etc), her antagonists have no redeeming qualities (they're basically racist pieces of s...more

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Jan 12, 2013 Beth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

**spoiler alert** This is not Octavia Butler's best book, but I really liked it because of the ways by which it complicates the scary stories humans tell one another. She achieves this by injecting a number of issues (some of them very uncomfortable) into the narrative, chief among them racism/xenophobia and sexuality.

The main character is Snorri, an Ina child (Inas are long-lived, so she's 52 but still a child) who suffers amnesia as the result of a terrible attack that kills everyone with whom...more

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Dec 30, 2012 B. Patterson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: vampires

I find Fledgling one of a kind among Vampire fiction. This is a story that centers around the idea of community and explores vampire lore from that perspective.

Butler's style is VERY simple, not a lot of heavy metaphors or flowery passages. But this works well for Fledgling and is, in fact, it's easy readability is one of it's strength.

I think people who don't usually read vampire fiction would still find Fledgling enjoyable. Butler's vamps call themselves Ina and their distinction from what we...more

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Nov 28, 2012 Dayna Ingram rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: meh, strong-female-lead, reviewed

This book dares to ask the question: What if Mormons were vampires?

No, it doesn't ask that. But it does depict polyamorous vampiric communities in a way I've never read before, so kudos. In fact, kudos for the world-building and general premise. Butler has an undeniably unique and intelligent imagination. Unfortunately, with Fledgling, she illustrated her deeply thought-out world quite tediously.

This book goes from an intriguing supernatural mystery to a mind-dumbingly slow supernatural courtro...more

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Oct 22, 2012 aPriL MEOWS often with scratching rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: finished-reading-but-i-hated-it, horror, bizarre-wtf, metafiction

I could not get over the 1. Child sex with adults, and 2. 'Beneficial' enslavement despite lack of free will or any impartiality being possible once enslaved. I finished this because I respect the author so much. She could not have written this to be her effort at writing pornography for deviants. It left a disgusting impression on me, though, and I won't read it ever again. I read it a couple of years ago, and I keep wavering between giving it one star because of my repugnance and five stars be...more I could not get over the 1. Child sex with adults, and 2. 'Beneficial' enslavement despite lack of free will or any impartiality being possible once enslaved. I finished this because I respect the author so much. She could not have written this to be her effort at writing pornography for deviants. It left a disgusting impression on me, though, and I won't read it ever again. I read it a couple of years ago, and I keep wavering between giving it one star because of my repugnance and five stars because I suspect it's a literary 'tour de force', to be cliched about it.

Butler's vampire story is all very plausible and makes sense fictionally. It's original, well-written and interesting. It's worth reading, if you can get past the more absolutely repulsive, situational morality in the plot angles. The lack of sexual boundaries in the book isn't the usual conversation of late we are having in the real world, meaning that of consenting adults. The vampire has the body of a little girl, and she goes around having beneficial sex with human adults while enslaving them with the power of enzymes, basically. There is a vampire war and battle strategizing, and a mystery of identity and deceit.

I guess I'd call this a horror thriller, with intensely disturbing scenarios and protagonists. It's a bit like reading graphic deviant porn that the literary world considers award winning, but when YOU read it you might be left thinking, WTF?

It's a very twisted book with disturbing horrors. After I decided to push on because I knew Butler must have created this sick 'romance' for reasons that weren't simply prurient, gradually the book appeared to me to be like an inverted, upside-down, inside-out nightmare dream world using actual printed White slaveowners' opinions regarding how beneficial slavery was for slaves before the American Civil War as a starting point. I really don't know if that's what Butler WAS doing, but if it was, she made her point, as far as I'm concerned. This is not satire, though, but a bitter bitter forced feeding of poisonous ideas disguised as something wonderfully uplifting and good for both races because of mutual symbiotic back scratching enabled by the wonders of scientific exploration. As a matter of fact, many proto-scientists of the 19th century put forward outrageous racial theories, many of which supposedly justified slavery because the enslaved were assumed to be not human or intelligent, so had to be taken care of by the superior human race by virtue of duty. These actual historical documents are so jaw-dropping horrifyingly stupid, that it made me realize the capacity of the human brain to engage in faulty logic to absolve itself of wrong doing truly has no boundaries.

So, the book is either a literary work of genius turning the racial issues of the Civil War into a brilliant, scathingly mocking horror story, or it's a disgusting deviant porn novel disguised as a vampire genre romance.(less)

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Oct 13, 2012 Outis rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

A comfort Butler, with no apocalypse in sight (what a relief!).
A very easy read without much ickyness (especially compared to some of her other books) but lacking in subtelty and with an unsatisfying ending.

The most memorable event for me happened in the first few pages and I thought the book started strong. I didn't mind the well-worn plot device although Butler milked it later in the book as an excuse for excessive exposition.
But then the mystery didn't turn out to be so interesting and the vi...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Maurinejt rated it 4 of 5 stars

After I finished Kindred, I hunted online for interviews with Octavia Butler. It's part of the book-is-over-but-I-don't-want-it-to-be syndrome. The interviews that turned up did mention Kindred, but mostly they were for her latest (and unfortunately her last) book, Fledgling. I was beyond intrigued to see what she would do with vampires. So I picked it up.

In the interviews, Butler said that Fledgling was written when her work on book three of Parables of the Sower was going nowhere. She wanted s...more

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Aug 24, 2012 Kasey Jane rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, coming-of-age

This was a really interesting reimagining of vampire stories. It contains elements from many different genres, but it doesn't exactly fit within any one. I loved the story of Shori's people and their relationship with humans; this is a good thing because Fledgling mostly serves as a vehicle to describe Butler's vampire race.

This is not a book for the squeamish. While it doesn't really contain any gore, Butler does set her readers up against one of today's deepest taboos. I think this is a better...more

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Aug 07, 2012 Grace rated it 3 of 5 stars

After reading a bunch of crap, my writing partner has banned it. She (reasonably) says that when you ready good stuff you're more likely to write good stuff, and when you read utter crap you get paranoid about your own work because you hear echoes. Octavia Butler seemed like a good person to kick off the trend of reading good stuff.

I wish I liked this book more than I did, but not because of the writing - the writing is beautiful. The worldbuilding's very good, the society as described is intere...more

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SciFi and Fantasy...: Any interviews or other info with clues about what sequel to Fledgling would have contained?	1	10	May 20, 2013 06:45am
other vampire of color books?	6	20	May 17, 2012 07:17am

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About Octavia E. Butler

Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. She won both Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant.

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“When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing.” — 43 people liked it

“Let them see that you trust them & let them solve their own problems, make their own decisions.Do that & they will commit their lives to you. Bully the, control them out of fear or malice or just for your own convenience, & after a while you'll have to spend all your time thinking for them, controlling them, & stifling their resentment.” — 3 people liked it

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