Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Clay's Ark (Patternmaster #3)

3.9 of 5 stars 3.90 · rating details · 1,698 ratings · 112 reviews

In a violent near-future, Asa Elias Doyle and her companions encounter an alien life form so heinous and destructive, they exile themselves in the desert so as not to contaminate other humans. To resist the compulsion to infect others is mental agony, but to succumb is to relinquish humanity and free will. Desperate, they kidnap a doctor and his two daughters as they cross...more

Paperback, 213 pages

Published December 1996 by Warner Books (first published 1984)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Best African American Authors

46th out of 115 books — 47 voters

Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

Best of Octavia E. Butler

14th out of 15 books — 17 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 2,469)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

May 11, 2013 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, aliens, apocalyptic, dystopia

I enjoyed the purity of this science fiction tale on the theme of alien possession. In this short novel of less than 200 pages, we are subjected to an intense story of survival of a single family with the fate of the human race at stake. The terrible choices they must make put it over the line into the territory of psychological horror. What makes this book stand out is its use of the story as a doorway to larger themes of what it means to be human and to be part of a community.

Written in 1984,...more I enjoyed the purity of this science fiction tale on the theme of alien possession. In this short novel of less than 200 pages, we are subjected to an intense story of survival of a single family with the fate of the human race at stake. The terrible choices they must make put it over the line into the territory of psychological horror. What makes this book stand out is its use of the story as a doorway to larger themes of what it means to be human and to be part of a community.

Written in 1984, the tale is set in the California Mojave Desert in 2021, close to our present, but 40 years from then. The projection is of a dystopic future in which civilization is on the bleeding edge. The haves live in gated compounds and the have nots live in “sewers”, vast regions dominated by lawless gangs. A doctor and his two 16 year old daughters end up being kidnapped by a community of people infected by microscopic organisms brought back by an astronaut returning from Alpha Centauri. For the subset of humans who survive the infection, the alien invaders act symbiotically to change the host in certain ways to enhance their survival and the hosts.

I can’t spoil the story with any details, but I can share that it puts the family in the position of having to choose whether to resign themselves to living with the altered human enclave or to escape and risk creating an uncontrollable epidemic.

The book is the last in the set of four books (and second in chronology) termed the Patternist series, which started with The Patternmaster in 1976. The others (of which I have read one) deal in various ways with alien-modified humans trying to take over Earth. Whereas these others deal with the threat of beings with telepathic powers, here the threat is closer to home in that the organisms seem in a sense to be bringing the conflict down to an individual’s limbic system versus higher brain systems. The book seems to question whether our humanity lies more with our emotional or out rational selves. I was impressed with this icing on the cake of a thriller yarn.

(less)

13 likes · like · see review

Dec 02, 2007 Sean rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Where Butler gets it right—always gets it right—is in the fascinating premises she builds her novels on. Where she occasionally gets it wrong is in the development.

Butler published Patternmaster in 1974, and then spent the next eight years filling in the history of the far-future world she had created. This produced Wild Seed, which became one of her best novels, but it also produced Survivor, which she later disowned, and Clay's Ark.

Clay's Ark has the usual Butlerian sexual, racial and xenophob...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jun 11, 2013 Kimm rated it 4 of 5 stars

3.5 Stars

Clay's Ark, though part of the Patternist series, only seems to have some minor continuity to book 2 (though Clay Dana and his legacy). In this novel we visit a future world that is experiencing an alien invasion but on a microscopic level. This science fiction novel is a disturbing apocalyptic horror spiced up with a bit of alien, zombie microbe fun.

As with all of Ms. Butler's work, you must have a strong constitution to deal with the depravity of humanity. You are forced yet again to...more

like · see review

Oct 09, 2012 Dorothea rated it 2 of 5 stars

At first I expected Clay's Ark to have more ... human interest? for me than Mind of My Mind.

Both novels concern a sort of new development for humanity -- Mind of My Mind has people with psychic abilities who are gaining power by working as a group, and Clay's Ark has an isolated set of people infected by an alien disease which changes them completely. All of the major characters in Mind of My Mind were part of the in-group of psychics; there was no real voice for the ordinary humans whom the psy...more

1 like · like · see review

May 01, 2009 Korynn rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fifantasy

Not the strongest of Butler's books. It's failing is, unlike Butler's other books which always seem to have a built in Catch-22 for intimadation and assimilation, it seems too easy for the reader to decide that the choice is terribly wrong. In this book Clay's Ark is a reference to an American space shuttle that returns to Earth loaded with a virus that transforms humanity - and only one man survives to infect the human populace. Only instead of destroying himself or going mad, he decides the on...more

like · see review

Aug 14, 2010 Heather rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. What would you do if you contracted a "disease" that forced you to seek out the uninfected and infect them? We've had plenty of examples of this in popular culture lately to help us think about the issue-28 Days, 28 Days Later, and I Am Legend have all dealt with the aftermath of an epidemic that forces us to lose our humanity in the mindless quest to propagate a disease over which we have no control. I've always seen these stories as allegory for human creations gone awry, as apocryphal tales o...more What would you do if you contracted a "disease" that forced you to seek out the uninfected and infect them? We've had plenty of examples of this in popular culture lately to help us think about the issue-28 Days, 28 Days Later, and I Am Legend have all dealt with the aftermath of an epidemic that forces us to lose our humanity in the mindless quest to propagate a disease over which we have no control. I've always seen these stories as allegory for human creations gone awry, as apocryphal tales of what will happen in humans continue to change nature to meet our demands.

Trust Octavia E. Butler to have a different way of framing this idea. In her novel Clay's Ark, part of the Patternist series, Butler shows us the beginning of an extraterrestrial epidemic that has the potential to completely wipe out the human race. Not by turning humans into raving, bloody zombies intent on killing every living thing in sight, but by changing our very genetic make-up so that we are no longer human, but also not completely inhuman. Clay's Ark is the story of Eli, a geologist and astronaut, who returns from a mission to the Alpha Centurion galaxy carrying an alien organism in his body. The organism has changed him at a molecular level so that he is faster, stronger, and has sharper senses than before. He also has the overwhelming compulsion to infect others with the alien life form. After his ship crashes back on Earth, he comes upon a remote compound in the desert where a patriarch and his family live isolated from the rest of the world-a world that has become increasingly dangerous as people fight for resources that are becoming more and more scarce. Eli has no choice but to infect the inhabitants. Several years later, a man and his twin daughters are traveling the highway through the desert when Eli's band kidnaps them to add to their growing community. What happens next determines the fate of all humankind.

While this may sound an awful lot like the other examples of this theme that I mentioned, what makes Butler's take different is the way that the infected try to hold on to their humanity. The organism living inside each of them causes them to have compulsions that are immoral by human standards-incest, rape, murder. But Eli is convinced that if they can keep their settlement small, and only take new people as necessary to keep their compulsions at bay, then they can retain their humanity and contain the infection. In Clay's Ark the literal infection is an alien life form, but Butler could be using that as a symbol for anything that causes us to act in ways that deny our humanity. Rather than experiencing the invasion from the perspective of the "clean", we see this outbreak from the point of view of the infected. Eli is basically struggling with the most basic existential questions. What is it that makes us human, what is it that defines us as a human race? And once the infected start having children who are very different than human children, what can be said for the future of the human race? Are the children a new species of human, or something altogether different? And does it matter, if they are taught how to act as humans? Clay's Ark may be a pretty short novel, but Butler gives us a lot to think about. The next book in the Patternist series takes us to the far future, and I find myself wondering whether I will like where this story comes to its natural conclusion.(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 07, 2010 Anna Call rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Well...this wasn't quite what I expected.
I assumed that the story would be a lot more cerebral than it was. Octavia Butler has been recommended to me a number of times in the past but this is the first work of hers that I've read. Lots of rape. What was up with that? Her world is pretty depressing - I think at one point she talked about how people regularly got killed in prisons, that there were designated high-crime zones, stuff like that. It kind of made me laugh at times, not because it isn't...more

like · see review

Nov 05, 2009 veronica rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Sci-fi fans

I am saddened to have discovered very few redeeming elements in Clay's Ark, especially as I absolutely loved other Butler novels. The plot was ridiculously thin, character development a notch above nonexistent, the connection to the Patternist series hardly noticeable, and the logic behind the story completely flawed.
Premise -- Early on in the 21st century, the psychokinesis that Clay Dana (of Mind of My Mind) had introduced to space travel has led to a group of humans traveling to the eons-away...more I am saddened to have discovered very few redeeming elements in Clay's Ark, especially as I absolutely loved other Butler novels. The plot was ridiculously thin, character development a notch above nonexistent, the connection to the Patternist series hardly noticeable, and the logic behind the story completely flawed.
Premise -- Early on in the 21st century, the psychokinesis that Clay Dana (of Mind of My Mind) had introduced to space travel has led to a group of humans traveling to the eons-away Proxima Centauri, where they pick up an alien disease. Consumed by disease-induced compulsion, one of the astronauts brings it back to Earth, infecting a very few. The infected few then proceed to create a kind of colony, attempting to contain the disease and prevent it from spreading to the whole Earth (can you see where this is bound to go?). However, they need to spread the disease to at least a few, for their own survival. Some of these few sacrificial humans include a father and his teenage twin daughters. The narration changes from chapter to chapter, following now the father, now either of the daughters, now the original carrier. While I appreciate that in this way I see the point of view of various people, the model also leads to none of the characters being developed even minimally.

So, what is this disease? It is some kind of virus-like micro organism that completely takes over the host, diluting certain human traits, and increasing the urge to survive, in order to further spread the disease. It basically changes the human makeup into some kind of human-alien hybrid -- a fantastically explored theme in Lillith's Brood, but something that falls shockingly short in Clay's Ark.

Other readers mentioned they found the violence and brutality extraneous -- I don't really agree, as I think the violence and brutality are actually the few times in the novel that "human" nature actually shows itself -- rapists, thieves, thugs, murderers -- these, after all, are among the humans that the colony is struggling to protect.

In fact, this may be the only redeeming factor of Butler's novel -- it made me reflect on how "inhuman" humans are -- what exactly are we giving up if we do succumb to an alien nature? Are we that special, after all, when only a minority of humans succeed in holding on to compassion, courage, ethics? Butler once again challenges her readers to question the value of humanity as a species, but compared to her other works, the novel is too much adventure-horror-thriller, lacking real substance beyond a few thin threads.
(less)

like · see review

Jan 26, 2012 Wendy B rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: scifi-fantasy, society-culture, psychology, philosophy, series

This was the most disturbing books by Octavia E. Butler that I have read yet, further inspiring my desire to have a conversation with her to find out just how that brain worked. Her concepts are fascinating, even when as disturbing as this one.

Perhaps it was the violence and rape of young children that has me troubled. The ending, certainly, is not for the faint of heart. However, I did not dislike this book because of this. My dislike comes, perhaps from a bias regarding its place as part of th...more

3 likes · like · see review

Aug 23, 2012 Cécile Cristofari rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction-sf

A rather fascinating development on the tenuous links between agragian utopias and utter dystopias, and how humankind could easily reverse into barbarity given the right context. The premise is simple (an illness, of extraterrestrial origin, alters the behavious of those contaminated); but the main interest of this books lies in the exploration of the struggle between the human side and the animal side, and the reorganisation of a whole community around the illness.

The characters are illustratio...more

like · see review

May 19, 2013 Derek rated it 3 of 5 stars

The story marches with the inevitability of Greek tragedy: the characters have been set up on certain vectors and cannot act other than their given natures, so the outcome is certain even if it were not already revealed by Patternmaster. The reader can only witness its progress. While the writing wanted me to devour the whole of the book in a sitting, this predestination and the desire to shout sense at the characters sharply limited the amount I could tolerate in a day.

Butler poses a paradox. O...more

like · see review

Mar 30, 2013 Leslie Reese rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was riveting although I can't explain why! Maybe it is the combination of concepts such as hunger, survival, and difference; or the fact that there is no relief from the tension of the story's events.

Clay's Ark was a space mission contaminated by an extraterrestrial organism whose sole survivor, Eli, is returned to earth where he infects others, and fathers a colony of this new, highly sensed, highly sexual, and physically strong breed. The earth in the western U.S. seems bleak and si...more

like · see review

Oct 07, 2012 Outis rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: post-apocalyptic, space-fantasy

warning: gratuitous torture and gore along with extreme forms of the types of unpleasantness you can expect from Butler

The book is not thoroughly bad. But Butler seems to have given free reign to her fascination with sociopathy in this one. Considering what I read in her other books, I became concerned about that when I found out the setting was near-future and pre-apocalytic. It turned out worse than I expected.
The beginning was pretty icky with an implausibly appalling social backdrop and the...more

like · see review

Mar 07, 2013 Cassi aka Snow White Haggard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2013

3.5/5 stars

Clay's Ark was a very pleasant surprise. I bought the book at a library sale because it was an out-of-date sci-fi book with a purple cover. I didn't know the author was rather prolific or that the book was the 3rd in a series (oops). It didn't sound terrible but the cover was just so old looking and I was charmed.

Despite being the 3rd in a series according to Goodreads, this book never felt like a sequel. All of the information you needed was in this book so as far as I'm concerned fo...more 3.5/5 stars

Clay's Ark was a very pleasant surprise. I bought the book at a library sale because it was an out-of-date sci-fi book with a purple cover. I didn't know the author was rather prolific or that the book was the 3rd in a series (oops). It didn't sound terrible but the cover was just so old looking and I was charmed.

Despite being the 3rd in a series according to Goodreads, this book never felt like a sequel. All of the information you needed was in this book so as far as I'm concerned for reviewing purposes it's a stand alone novel. The book started quickly, throwing characters and situations at you and pulling you into the story immediately. Maybe it's because it's a shorter sci-fi novel, but it didn't fuss a lot about slow-burning world building and I liked that. It was quick to read and very readable.

It's interesting to read a book that was written in the past but set in the future, especially where race relations play into it. The three main characters in this book are a white father and his two biracial daughters. The father feels like he constantly has to explain that they are his daughters. At one point a character points out that despite his great credentials as a medical doctor there was no way a white man married to a black woman would've been accepted into the space program.

I know things aren't all peachy-keen perfection in race-relations, but it's interesting to note that we're further along than an author from 1984 imagined we'd be in a far-off future where we're sending people to other planets. They couldn't have imagined a white man married to a black woman as an astronaut. Our president's father was black and his mother was white. Regardless of your politic opinions, it's something interesting to notice in this book.

This book did have it's share of problems. Characters were never fully developed (it's not a very long book) and there's a lot of rape or talk about raping in this book. There's a reason for it plot-wise, however that doesn't make it any less triggering. Honestly I'm not sure how I feel about every scene regarding this topic.

At times the writing is obviously dated and not the best, but overall this was a very enjoyable science fiction/dystopian story. I recommend it especially if you're looking for a quick read. If I can find them easily I want to read the rest of this series. It's always interesting to read a throw-back-book, especially one like this where they're envisioning a future and see how different the world is now from when they imagined back them.(less)

like · see review

Jan 29, 2010 Oanh rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-and-speculative-fiction, women-authors

Excellent. Now Octavia Butler is a magnificent dystopia author, who creates such credible images of societies falling apart but, more importantly and more interestingly, investigates the intense moral/ethical dilemmas of her characters as they are confronted with whatever it is that is going wrong in society.

In Clay's Ark, there is a microscopic organism that develops a parasitic/symbiotic relationship with humans. Its desire to survive and propagate is insatiable, and the infected humans have t...more

like · see review

Aug 15, 2012 Judi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-1998

The central character, Eli, is the only survivor of a ship wreck (space ship, that is), and is carrying an alien disease/life form that redesigns the human body and is intent on taking over all human bodies. The "disease" is highly communicable and the alien life form drives it's host to thrive for physical contact. What makes this book interesting is how Elli strives to keep his humanity by trying to "contain" this disease and the measures he and his "family" must take to "feed" this alien life...more

like · see review

Jan 06, 2012 Pilouetta rated it 5 of 5 stars

just the other day i was cruising down a lonely texas road, the low sun making waves and shadows long and mysterious in places. i thought of fast moving beasts - hybrids, part human, part extra-stellar. i checked my doors to see if they were in the locked position, and eyeballed my chihuahua in the rear-view. and though i love my dog, i knew the beings would go for him first, doubly useful as bait. did i make this up, did i read about this recently? and that is the thing i love about octavia but...more

like · see review

May 13, 2013 Rani rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm not usually interested in fantasy but Octavia Butler is really able to make her stories so interesting from the beginning that the reader is hooked pretty quickly. This book tells the story of Eli a space explorer who returns to earth from another planet infected by an alien microorganism. He finds an enclave set in the desert and quickly passes the microorganism to the small population in the area. Over time they struggle to avoid the organism being released into the broader world.

The live...more

like · see review

Feb 23, 2013 Linda rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is the third book that I have read in the Patternmaster series. I enjoyed it the least. I assumed that there would be some connection with Mind of My Mind, but the book does not continue the plot. The ending was not very satisfying.

Generally, the book is violent. It doesn’t overly describe gross things, but I just don’t enjoy reading about people getting their heads cut off or gang rape, or even people eating raw meat. If I subject myself to all that, in a fiction book, there should be a pa...more

like · see review

Jan 12, 2013 Abra rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: re-read, science-fiction, 2013

One of my least favorite Butler books. It's so sad. The link to Mind of My Mind seems tenuous -- Clay Dana in this book is an old man who's used psi powers to create an FTL starship drive, I guess, but he's offstage, and no mention is made of the Patternists. The next book, which I've just started re-reading (I've only re-read these two a couple of times, rare for me. I am ambivalent about them.) combines the escalating plot points from this book and the creation of a Patternist society on earth...more

like · see review

Apr 28, 2012 Nadia rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a great novel, set over maybe a week a couple of days, This book could easily be a successful cult low budget movie and I am wondering why no one has tried up till now.

The story follows a father and his two daughters who are off on a trip and get abducted by strangers. The strangers look sick and take them back to their 'village' where everyone else looks just as ill. One of the daughters has Leukemia and it's not clear whether she will survive the ordeal, but the strangers seem pretty t...more

like · see review

Feb 26, 2013 Kay rated it 4 of 5 stars

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

like · see review

Apr 17, 2009 Annie rated it 5 of 5 stars

My favorite author ever. She died just a couple years ago. I'm heartbroken because i wanted to meet her, shake her hand, tell her how much I identify with her work, how much she infuses me with a desire to write. i want to recollect all of her work and read it sequencially, I keep loaning it out. i didn't realize when I read it, that i was reading about polyamory. i didn't know the word yet. she writes about xenophobia and alternative morals amoung other things, the bleak future, warnign us to c...more

like · see review

May 04, 2011 Jacki rated it 3 of 5 stars

Set in the near future, in a world where humanity has turned life into a cesspool, a doctor and his two teenage girls find themselves kidnapped by a strange, and apparently ill, group of people.

The group is headed by Eli, a astronaut, who has brought back to Earth a microorganism bent on creating new beings by infecting humans and manipulating their DNA. Unable to control their more "animalistic" impulses, yet wishing to save humanity, the group isolates themselves on a ranch in the desert, onl...more

like · see review

May 10, 2011 Ringthebells rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: re-read

I read this one right after Wild Seed (having read it previously more than 15 years ago for a university course; I didn't remember much from that first reading). I didn't like it nearly as much as Wild Seed; there were no characters as interesting or appealing as Anyanwu, and the disease stuff freaks me out a little too much. I was puzzled because I'd heard that both books were in the same series, but I couldn't see any connection; I've now done a bit of investigation online and determined that...more

like · see review

Jun 12, 2013 MeiLin Miranda rated it 3 of 5 stars

The last-written--and least--of the Patternist books. Butler's almost parasitic alien life form is frighteningly believable, as is the fate of the people it infects...and the story is so very bleak. I don't do bleak well. That's not why this is the least of the Patternist books. Butler was filling in the gaps, splicing the last thread in the story she began weaving with Patternmaster, and that's exactly how it reads.

1 like · like · see review

Mar 17, 2013 Paul Eckert rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

This is the third book I've read in the Patternist series, going in the order they are collected in Seed To Harvest. I previously read Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind, and those two books were directly related, with a few of the same characters 200 years down the road. However, I didn't notice any direct links between Clay's Ark and Mind of My Mind, but maybe I missed something.

Anyway, here's the plot in a nutshell: an astronaut has crash landed on Earth, carrying with him a contagious disease-or...more This is the third book I've read in the Patternist series, going in the order they are collected in Seed To Harvest. I previously read Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind, and those two books were directly related, with a few of the same characters 200 years down the road. However, I didn't notice any direct links between Clay's Ark and Mind of My Mind, but maybe I missed something.

Anyway, here's the plot in a nutshell: an astronaut has crash landed on Earth, carrying with him a contagious disease-organism from another galaxy. The organism assumes control over a human's body and makes it act in accordance with staying alive and spreading the disease to others. It's like an evolutionary survival instinct, except now humans are just a host for the real survivors.

Don't want to give much more about the story away, even if it wouldn't spoil the enjoyment of the read.

The story is told in chapters that alternate between the past, when the astronaut first crash landed on Earth, to the present when a father and his daughters are kidnapped by a strange cult. The setting is in the USA around the year 2060 (I think), and now the country is divided into safe enclave communities and everything else which is ruled by gangs and thieves.

Just as with the first two Patternist stories I read, Clay's Ark incorporates many of the same themes: gender, race, evolution, survival, breeding programs, and morality. As I've come to expect, Butler never gives an easy answer to any of these ideas, and instead poses situations in which morality seems like a luxury in the face of survival. She masterfully creates situations in which there seems to be no right answer, and the reader cannot root for one decision or the other, but instead wait to see how everything unfolds.

The characters were sympathetic and flawed, and her choice of characters were quite interesting. What I love about Butler's stories is that even the people who seem to be perpetrating a bad situation, once told from the other perspective, one can see how the "bad guys" are not really bad at all but just other people with another perspective. Indeed, this element is really strong in Clay's Ark.

Whatever awards Ms. Butler received in her lifetime, she surely deserved them and then some. Her writing is a great example of how science fiction is the genre that is often best suited to handle the big questions about human nature, and where it might be headed. (less)

like · see review

Jun 26, 2007 Tahirah A.W rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Hell Yes!!!

I love this fuckin book!!! This woman is the bomb, what can I say! This book was just tight; Butler's ability to weave and artful and intricate story are at its finest. You can see how she gradually has developed the foundation for all her stories through reading this work. I enjoy how she locates the notion of “otherness” within the human body and psyche, i.e., we are and can become the “others” at any point in her story. Also, she uses the body as a way to locate ones identity; thus, identity...more

like · see review

Mar 25, 2013 Jeannejude rated it 5 of 5 stars

The third in the Patternmaster series; this book begins to chart changes in the world beyond the patternists we've been following in the previous two books. Again, multiple points of view (in this bouncing between past and present in alternating chapters) allow for dense narrative without laborious delivery of information. Similar to other works Clay's Ark looks at what it means to be "human" or have "humanity" and what happens when societies break down and new ones are created.

Perhaps the most...more

like · see review

Oct 24, 2012 sweet pea rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-content, science-fiction

this is probably my second favorite novel in the Patternist series. oh it's fucked-up, trust. if the themes of the other novels are disturbing (which they are), this is times two. the impulses of the invading organism, the impulses of the family (to flee or stay), and the interactions between the various characters and the desperate denizens of the outside world makes for an intersting (and fucked-up) story. although, without Keira the story would fall flat. she's the most interesting character...more

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 82 83 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (8)

More editions...

Genres

Science Fiction

82 users

Fantasy

16 users

Speculative Fiction

11 users

Science Fiction Fantasy

9 users

Apocalyptic > Post Apocalyptic

7 users

Science Fiction > Dystopia

4 users

Feminism

4 users

Science Fiction > Apocalyptic

3 users

American > African American Literature

3 users

Cultural > African American

3 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

Blood Colony
by Tananarive Due
Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora
by Sheree R. Thomas (Editor)
The Salt Roads
by Nalo Hopkinson
Futureland
by Walter Mosley
The Companions
by Sheri S. Tepper

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.

More about Octavia E. Butler...

Books by Octavia E. Butler

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Clay's Ark

1 quiz

More quizzes & trivia...

title link	preview: Clay's Ark
avg rating	preview: Clay's Ark Goodreads rating: 3.90 (1698 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60933.Clay_s_Ark?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1344268942l/60933.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60933.Clay_s_Ark?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Clay's Ark by Octavia E. Butler[/url]

Clay's Ark (Patternmaster #3)

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website