![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I've fallen a bit behind on posting again, partly because I've been trying to figure out how to write about Adulthood Rites, the second book in the Lilith's Brood/Xenogenesis trilogy, without spoiling the first one. I've been overthinking it. Read as much or as little of this entry as you want, but I really encourage you to read the trilogy!
This book does exactly what the second book in a trilogy should do. Butler assumes we've read her first book and gently reminds us of key points without marching us through them all again. (It probably helps that it hadn't been that long since I read the first book!) She continues her amazing world building while keeping the novel very focused on key characters. The protagonist here wasn't in the first novel, but we see some of the characters from Dawn again in important roles—and I didn't even know I wanted to see some of them again until I did! This series really asks The Big Questions: what does it mean to be human? What do we owe ourselves and each other? What do we owe those we think aren't like us?
I find her worlds very convincing, and she gives enough explanation to stimulate my interest more without overwhelming me or making it dull, because her focus is not so much on how things work but on how people interact with their environment. By "people" I mean humans, Oankali, and ships.
Everything I say without spoilers sounds abstract and kind of dry (no matter how many exclamation points I use), but this book has All The Feels too. The major characters long to connect but have difficulties along the way, some familiar to us and others . . . not exactly like ours. We have found family. My sympathies and my own answers shifted as I read, and I'm eager to read the third. I'm putting it off a little because I find when I space out series a little, I remember them better and enjoy them more than if I try to mainline them or stretch them out too much.
Read it! Read it!
This book does exactly what the second book in a trilogy should do. Butler assumes we've read her first book and gently reminds us of key points without marching us through them all again. (It probably helps that it hadn't been that long since I read the first book!) She continues her amazing world building while keeping the novel very focused on key characters. The protagonist here wasn't in the first novel, but we see some of the characters from Dawn again in important roles—and I didn't even know I wanted to see some of them again until I did! This series really asks The Big Questions: what does it mean to be human? What do we owe ourselves and each other? What do we owe those we think aren't like us?
I find her worlds very convincing, and she gives enough explanation to stimulate my interest more without overwhelming me or making it dull, because her focus is not so much on how things work but on how people interact with their environment. By "people" I mean humans, Oankali, and ships.
Everything I say without spoilers sounds abstract and kind of dry (no matter how many exclamation points I use), but this book has All The Feels too. The major characters long to connect but have difficulties along the way, some familiar to us and others . . . not exactly like ours. We have found family. My sympathies and my own answers shifted as I read, and I'm eager to read the third. I'm putting it off a little because I find when I space out series a little, I remember them better and enjoy them more than if I try to mainline them or stretch them out too much.
I was glad to see Lilith again when I started the novel and a little disappointed as it became clear that she wasn't the protagonist this time; I warmed up to Akin a little slowly. (I wish she hadn't waited until so far in the novel to have a character sound out his name: ah-keen. I kept changing pronunciations in my own mind until I reached that point.) Select humans and Oankali have gone to earth, and they have started having construct babies—hybrids created from the DNA of four parents, two from each species. Akin is Lilith's son, the first male construct born to a human mother. He is neither fully human nor fully Oankali but both.
Read it! Read it!
Tags: