Fledgling (June 2023) Buddy Read Discussion - Laurel & Faith

[✨faith✨trust✨pixiedust✨]

Welcome to the Fledgling Buddy Read Discussion thread! This thread officially opens on [TBD] and anyone can join at any time. Please keep in mind that spoilers are allowed in this thread but only up to the group's current reading place. Do not spoil the book if you've read further than the group. Any extra days can be used to catch up!

Each day we will be reading by chapters or page numbers. Page numbers are an approximation based on the hardcover or paperback that is the default on Goodreads. The suggested Buddy Read discussion schedule is as follows:

Week of 06/[TBD] (I will use June 20th as a benchmark, but this is subject to change)
June 20: Chapters 1-4
June 21: Chapters 5-8
June 22: Chapters 9-12
June 23: Chapters 13-16
June 24: Chapters 17-20

Week of 06/25
June 25: Chapters 21-24
June 26: Chapters 25-Epilogue

PARTICIPANTS
~ Laurel
~ Faith

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile]]

June 20th works for me! Or whenever lol

[✨faith✨trust✨pixiedust✨]

laurel [the suspected bibliophile] wrote: "June 20th works for me! Or whenever lol"

I'm not sure when the book will be available (estimate has been fluctuating wildly recently) so I'm just going to plan for then, and then if I need to just buy it, then I will 😅

[Jen]

I'm reading this book this month so I'd love to join the discussion. No guarantees I can stick to the timeline.

[✨faith✨trust✨pixiedust✨]

There's no guarantee that we'll stick to it either haha so please, join us! :)

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile]]

✨faith✨trust✨pixiedust✨ wrote: "There's no guarantee that we'll stick to it either haha so please, join us! :)"

Has your hold come in yet?

[✨faith✨trust✨pixiedust✨]

@laurel Nope :(

[Jen]

Normally what I would do when I read a book is google the name + book club discussion questions. Sadly, this book did not yield many results. So I've come up with a couple of them on my own:

1. What other vampire media have you been into?
2. How are the vampires in this book similar or different to others you've encountered?

[Jen]

Personally, I'm not an obsessive consumer of vampire media, I've read Dracula, loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer, watched True Blood with increasing disinterest every year, and I'm currently very into What we do in the shadows. But that's it.

I find every vampire mythology has slightly different rules depending on what the purpose of the story is. So in Dracula the main character is supposed to be seductive but evil, so humans find him attractive, but ultimately he isn't good for them. In this book at least so far, they're attractive and seductive, but relatively benign for humans.

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile]]

I'm also not a huge vampire fan, although in my teens-twenties I read a lot of urban fantasy, specifically with vampires (although I found shifters more fascinating).

I'm up to chapter 5 and (view spoiler)[holy hell this is weird even for me. This is the fourth Octavia Butler book I've read, and I've noted that when she includes sex, it's always weird and uncomfortable as hell sex that feels like it's a big taboo even when it's *technically* not. This is no different.

But the vampire aspect of this one is really cool! I wish I had read it when it came out, although I don't think I would have been emotionally ready for it (hide spoiler)]

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile]]

Up to Chapter 14 (view spoiler)[

I feel like I have read this book before, although I know for a fact that I haven't. There's something very familiar in it.

I'm definitely picking up shades of Ann Rice, kinda? And also shades of Butler's Dawn book, with how the symbiotic relationship between Ina and humans develops.

Anywho, I'm very intrigued about who is killing off the Ina and why they are doing it. It very clearly is about Shori, but why?

Although, I cannot get over the general ick factor of a sexually active vampire being (who, at 53, is a vampire child but still older than her humans) who presents as an 11 year old. The sex scenes are really cringeworthy and gross (hide spoiler)]

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile]]

And done. (view spoiler)[It pains me to rate this three stars, because the hang-up is entirely on me and not on the Grandmaster of Science Fiction herself.

But I could not get past the idea of Shori and her outwardly prepubescent self getting her seggsy on with adults, no matter that she was actually 53 years old. Because to her people she was a child and too young to mate with, even if it was somehow okay for her to have the sex with humans.

As for the story itself. I loved the world-building. A good vampire story is always a fun read.

And the mystery of who was murdering Shori's people—and how her family had worked for generations to bring about her, an Ina who could walk in the daylight—was so intriguing, particularly as Shori herself had to figure out who she was since she came back with amnesia.

However, once it go to the last 25%, the story devolved into a legal drama, which was interesting but not exciting or particularly thrilling. (hide spoiler)]

[Jen]

I've got behind, like a good procrastinator. I got halfway but then since the weekend I haven't touched it.

[Jen]

I finished it yesterday. I read this because a prompt on a book challenge I decided to do this year was read something by Octavia Butler. If I had heard of her, it was only the name, I didn't know what kind of writer she was. My library had some of her books on the shelf, so I picked the one that was shortest. I'm not a huge scifi fan, and I found the writing in this quite stilted. And there's so much description that does nothing to advance the plot. Why does Shori describe every time she gets up and gets dressed, when all she ever wears is jeans and a t-shirt?

As to the vampire stuff, there are two general descriptions of what happens when they bite someone: 1. They drain the person's blood and they die or 2. They drink some of the person's blood and it becomes a relationship. In the second category, the relationship always becomes very intimate, if not always sexual.

The book says that Shori had 7 symbionts before she was injured, and they don't feed from children as the risk of injury is too great. They don't say at what age an Ina would start taking on symbionts, either. So yeah, this book is implying that a being that is pretty old but presents like a human child is doing pretty intimate things with people whose outward appearance is much older than her.