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SF. Almost three hundred years after the population of Earth has been decimated by nuclear war, Lilith Iyapo wakes up on a space ship among aliens. She learns that her rescuers/captors want to return humans to Earth, but there's a price. The Oankali survive by merging their genetic material with other species, and the humans they return to Earth won't be human for long.
Boy, is this book crawling with consent issues. Aliens: Not all that interested in your personal boundaries! One of them repeate ...more
Boy, is this book crawling with consent issues. Aliens: Not all that interested in your personal boundaries! One of them repeate ...more
Nicely engrossing scifi. Lilith (not-so-subtle naming) wakes up on an alien ship after having been rescued from an apocalyptic earth, and has to help repatriate humanity. The first third or so was my favorite, thanks to the worldbuilding (alienbuilding?). I wish it hadn't then veered so thematically into the same territory as Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower series -- tall black woman who's lost everything has to become the leader of a hodgepodge group of survivors to ensure the survival of
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In this novel earth has been destroyed by war. Traveling aliens rescue a few humans from earth. The aliens will not let the humans reproduce, because of the human contradiction: humans are both an intelligent species and a hierarchical one. The two lead to inevitable destruction, according to the aliens (Oankali). The will allow humans to have children with them, mixed alien/human children. They select one human to train the others.
This critique of human behavior, along with the three gendered ...more
This critique of human behavior, along with the three gendered ...more
first read somewhere in 1991 or 2 or 3, 5 stars then, and still amazingly powerful now.
when i first read this at 14 or 15 or so, it was more than a little transgressive. it was sort of about sex, in a way that felt very frank and intimate (voyeuristic?). it's still sort of about sex, but maybe more about permission and choice and alienation (both literal and figurative). 'Dawn' is an uncomfortable book. at its heart, it's about choices that are no choice at all - if you want to live, you must ch ...more
when i first read this at 14 or 15 or so, it was more than a little transgressive. it was sort of about sex, in a way that felt very frank and intimate (voyeuristic?). it's still sort of about sex, but maybe more about permission and choice and alienation (both literal and figurative). 'Dawn' is an uncomfortable book. at its heart, it's about choices that are no choice at all - if you want to live, you must ch ...more
This is a tough book to review. It was good, but I think it had been too built up and my expectations were just too high. Plus, I found it completely depressing.
The protagonist's voice was identical to the voice in Kindred, so if you liked one you will probably like the other. Both books deal with a lot of the same themes, too: how important is free will? can humans live peacefully together and see each other as equals? how do people react and change when they are trapped and imprisoned by other ...more
The protagonist's voice was identical to the voice in Kindred, so if you liked one you will probably like the other. Both books deal with a lot of the same themes, too: how important is free will? can humans live peacefully together and see each other as equals? how do people react and change when they are trapped and imprisoned by other ...more
May 12, 2018
Liz
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bookriot afrofuturism
Dec 27, 2007
Zack
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Jun 08, 2009
Sharon
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Dec 07, 2014
Phoenix
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Feb 24, 2015
Becki
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Aug 22, 2016
Ray (user2637)
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Nov 03, 2017
krystal
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Jan 28, 2019
Rose Anne
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Sep 05, 2019
Tiffany
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Apr 07, 2020
Gary
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Jun 04, 2020
Isabel
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