I don't think I can take it anymore. I strongly disliked the first volume, Dawn, but figured I'd give Vol. 2 a chance - I've liked Butler in the past, and this series is supposed to be very good.

But now I'm five chapters into Adulthood Rites, and not only does it still have humans under the sadistic thumb of the most boringly evil aliens of all time, now we have my Least Favorite Trope Ever: obnoxiously precocious children! Obnoxiously precocious HUMAN-ALIEN HYBRID children! AUGH I CANNOT TAKE I More...

Octavia Butler is playing with fire here - these books probe the deepest topics that fiction can explore, and drive straight to the heart of many of the most important issues humans deal with. Fortunately, she's up to the task, and indeed the entire first third of this series is an extravagant setup; while Dawn is somewhat frustrating to read, it is completely necessary. Were Butler to have plunged straight into the kind of things she writes about in Imago, it would have felt cheap and crass, bu More...

Okay, so, how dare I give anything Octavia Butler wrote four stars instead of five? I think that if I read some of her later stuff first, I would have understood this narrative to be part of her growing process as a theorist/novelist. Being that it was my first book of hers to read, after hearing so much about her gay genius and feminist protagonists, I was really disappointed with her tendency to fall back on tired notions of femininity/masculinity, imperative to breed, and the alien third gend More...

Lilith's Brood is actually three novels: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago, which have since been published in one volume. The basic story is this: humanity has virtually destroyed itself and the earth in a nuclear conflagration. Just after we've done so, a strange and powerful alien race called the Oankali arrive to save us. Sort of.

The Oankali are strange in a number of ways. They have horrifying snake-like sensory tentacles all over their bodies, they have three genders, and one of those ge More...

I wouldn't normally define myself as a straight-up science fiction fan - in fact, I'm normally put off by techno fairy tales and scary alien stories. But I finally picked up Lilith's Brood after my father (who is something of a purist) bothered me enough. I was instantly intrigued.

It isn't just a post-apocalyptic novel... or an exploration of other worlds... or other races of beings, for that matter. No, Butler decided to use the aliens that have taken control of the dying human race in order t More...

Octavia Butler has a way of holding up a mirror to humanity and showing us everything that is ugly and perhaps shameful. I have read every book Ms. Butler has written and this was not my favorite of her books in my first read, but it is the one that has stuck with me the longest. This is the closest to straight up sci-fi that her books get, but it still remains human. The Xenogenesis series is so fascinating on both a cultural and an anthropological level, in the destruction of one world and the More...

There aren't very many books that really address how the utopian vision went wrong. Butler gives us our world almost destroyed by war, with the survivors, and the planet itself, rescued by aliens. Then she shows us how a peaceful society can be destroyed by dissent and hopelessness, and saved when hope is found.

It's the sort of profound overview upon which classic science fiction is based, and it is amazing. It's quite clear why the trilogy would be so lauded with awards.

Library copy

i just finished the first book of the trilogy: so far, i'm loving it. it combines some of the elements i find most fascinating about science fiction: strange, new worlds, strong characters who have to make complex choices, interpersonal relationships and the development of new societies, psychological warfare, morality, questions of what makes us human, space travel... chock full of good stuff.

book 2 was also a good story, interesting, a compelling story about lileth's firstborn son, who's stole More...

Octavia Butler uses this book to explore what makes us human by taking humanity completely out of its known context and giving it a whole new one with fundamental restrictions and specifically chosen opportunities. This allows her to put humanity in high-relief, and I have to say a lot of what she says strikes a chord -- her definition of the Human Contradiction, for example, is spot-on. I think she does get a little bit heavy-handed -- I feel there's a little more gray scale to human behavior t More...

this is the first science fiction book i have read since i was a teenager, and it was so good, i fell in love with octavia butler, and my interest in science fiction was rekindled.

when i started to develop a critical consciousness in college i found that i couldn't read my formerly favorite science fiction books, i.e. stranger in a strange land by robert heinlein, because while they could imagine amazing technological and magical futures where the human mind could overcome previous boundaries, More...

This series covers an Earth destroyed by mankind but salvaged by the Oankali, a space travelling species who specialize in genetic engineering. Dawn features the story of Lilith, one of the few humans saved by the Oankali, and her slow and reluctant conversion to their goals. Lilith's an interesting character, who never quite relinquishes her strong individuality despite her deep attachment to her Oankali mates. Adulthood Rites changes POV to Lilith's son Akim, who is a cross-breed of human-Oank More...

This book is actually a trilogy: Dawn, Adulthood Rites and Imago. Ordinarily, I avoid trilogies because if I don't read them all at once I lose the thread and if I do read them all at once I'm bored by the end. I only give 5 stars to books that I think are something really out of the ordinary, and this is; not just for its genre (sci-fi), but for any fiction. I love being able to lose myself in a richly imagined world, and this book allowed me to do that. Ms. Butler's vision is expansive and at More...

I read Dawn a few months ago, and while I liked it, I wasn't blown away. After I read Fledgling and was newly impressed with Butler's creativity and way with language, I decided to finish the series. It absorbed me for two days, and I ended up absolutely loving it. This series reminded me of Vonnegut without the humor--where he uses absurdity to make a point, Butler lets that same point seep into you a little at a time. These books are about perception, violence, independence, and most of all, w More...

Like every good sci-fi book, this book about aliens explores what it means to be human. What makes this book amazing is that Butler quietly takes the usual aliens-invade-earth trope and gives it a good hard shake. Gender and race theory mix with an environmental consciousness and startling prescience regarding new science. I read once that she predicted develoments in certain scientific fields in these books. It is a sci-fi exploration of colonization - even a 'benevolent' colonizer still threat More...

I love Octavia Butler and this trilogy is the best. I was totally engaged with the characters and the story line. I actually feel disappointed that Imago, one of the trilogy, was her last.

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER-- Lilith's Brood (aka Xenogenesis): Three books originally marketed as a trilogy under the title Xenogenesis with newer editions published under the title Lilith's Brood. A story which takes place after Earth has been destroyed by war and pollution leaving only a handful of humans still alive but imprisoned by a strange horrific species of aliens who are willing to make a deal with the humans to save the Earth and humanity. In exchange for a total terraforming makeover of the E More...

The same co-worker who introduced me to China Mieville gave me Octavia Butler's trilogy for Christmas another year; and again she shared these with me because it's kind of screwed up and she knew that was just right for me.

Octavia Butler formulates a much more realistic science fiction universe vis a vis human experience and reaction when genuinely confronted with something Other and Superior. Probably taking some cues from the characters in Lovecraft's stories, Butler reminds us that, in the e More...

Well, I read "Dawn" and loved it.

I was really unhappy because it is extremely hard to buy these 3 books separate. So, I bought the huge book and started in the middle.

I read "Adulthood Rites" and was not as good as "Dawn". I think the thing "Dawn" had that really got it... was the closeness to being now. Octavia Butler is really good at giving you something that is so slightly different than know and creeping you out! I love in a weird masochistic way. But, with “Adulthood Rites” she was being More...

You'd think it takes a rare book to have you going both, "And what is the conflict again?" and, "How the fuck are you not freaking out???" at the same time for the same reasons.

Unfortunately it's not. Just a badly written book.

After humanity conveniently destroys itself in a nuclear war, benevolent tentacly aliens offer to help humanity repopulate. The upsides are amazingly convenient technology, superpowers, longevity, genetically superior children, and (mandatory) mind blowing sex. The downsid More...

I read this after several years of having it sit on my shelf, pretty much untouched. Lilith's Brood is actually three books taking place in one world, with a similar cast of characters in each.
The main pretense of this world is that a nuclear holocaust has ravaged the earth, and the remaining humans have been picked up by an alien species whose main purpose is to collect genetic traits and change themselves as they do.
As a bioengineer, I really appreciated not only the overall pretense, but al More...

After finishing this trilogy all I have to say is this: Octavia E. Butler, where have you been all my life?

"Humans had evolved from hierarchical life, dominating, often killing other life. Oankali had evolved from acquisitive life, collecting and combining with other life."

These species are at odds with each other in Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy. The rash, violent Humans we all know so well have nearly annihilated themselves and their planet. They are saved from the brink of extinction by the sp More...

A bizarre read, for sure. If you're a fan of sci fi with themes of motherhood, sexuality, colonialism, this is for you. Starting with the first book, Butler creates a world in which humans have almost annihilated themselves à la the Cold War, but enough hardy folks in South America and Africa have survived the nuclear fallout that a strange new species called the Ooankali can save the remaining humans and restore the planet back to its youthful self. There is, however, a pretty huge catch: the O More...

What do I think? I think I have a signed copy of each of the individual books that make up Lilith's Brood. The only time I have ever chased an author for a sig. I know that many people come to Lilith's Brood expecting a deeply feminist dissertation and end the storyline a bit disappointed, but I don't think that feminism was her main focus in these books. I had the luck to read these novels before I read any of her other novels or even knew of her as an author (a chance find at a used bookstore) More...

I read all three of these books, but it wasn't all at once. The story was interesting, and given the fact it's a theme that has been done before, that's impressive. I really like dystopian/utopian fiction, and this was an interesting mix between the two. The reason I took so long to finish all three was the fact that I kept losing interest, though. The story was a bit confusing at points, and didn't seem to go anywhere at some points. There was a lot of stereotypical characterization in the huma More...

After reading the three books, I found myself almost surprised to have enjoyed them. It was like a revelation that a.) I was done and b.) I had made it all the way to the end. And stranger still, the experience had been a largely pleasant one.

The books don't really, I think, take the easy way out when it comes to dealing with their own subject matter. The novel's aliens scare human beings on some deep down level, and this thread of fear is never forgotten, never truly abandoned. The books deal More...

I read this book for my ENG 472 class titled “American Nature Writing”. When I started this book I didn’t understand how “Lilith’s Brood” had anything to do with nature, but after getting through the first part of this science-fiction novel it became clear. This book is very science-fiction in the way that it starts by earth as we know it being destroyed and finding out that aliens really do exist. Now I’m not a very big fan of sci-fi or aliens, so I immediately had an aversion to this book, but More...

Three great books in one. The stories of various individuals in one family -- Lilith and some of her descendants -- are used to explore what happens when a humanity almost destroyed by nuclear war is saved by an alien species that travels the universe and seeks to 'trade' with other species by interbreeding with them. Butler's greatest strength, I think, is her use of stories of compelling personal journeys as basic building blocks for exploring fascinating worlds. Lots of authors try to do this More...

The cover for the edition pictured here sucks. Luckily my book didn't have this cover, as I would have been embarrassed to read this book in public.

This is a trilogy that starts with the story of Lilith, a woman who survives nuclear war only to be rescued and put into suspended animation by aliens for 250 years. When she is awoken, she's given the task of awaking other humans and convincing them to join genetically with the aliens in order to create a new species. Lilith abhors this role but is More...