Parable of the Talents (urspr publ 1998; utgåvan 2001)

As the sequel to Parable of the Sower, this book goes further into the dystopian future America that Butler has created. At first we open up about 30 or so years after where the last book ended, with Lauren's daughter as the first-person narrator. I wasn't sure how much I was going to like that, but then we switched back to Lauren's journals pretty much right where we left off at the end of previous title, with Lauren and her crew settling on the land they dub "Acorn." From there, the book switches back and forth between Lauren and her daughter, with a few glimpses of writings by Lauren's husband and by one of her brothers.

In some ways, I liked this book even more the previous title -- it was really interesting to see Lauren putting Earthseed into action and building a community; there was more of the politics of Christian America with its eerie similarities to today in some respects; and there were unresolved issues from the previous book that come to greater light here. Butler introduces more technologies, making this title even more strongly rooted in sci-fi, although she's also not far off in many of these -- for instance, "geneprints" are DNA testing and "dream masks" are VR goggles. Butler also makes some beautiful, if sad, parallels between Lauren and her brother.

In other ways, this book was even more difficult than the last one. The loss of the walled city and Lauren's perilous trek north were scary, but nothing like the things that happen in this book. There was always a sense of hope in the previous book, no matter how slim. There were large swatches of this book where I did not have any hope for Lauren's situation. And while the end of the book is I think meant to be hopeful with Earthseed finally meeting "the destiny" of traveling to outer space to colonize new spaces, I cannot help but feel sad that Lauren and her daughter are never truly reunited and that her daughter and brother remain dedicated to a religion that enslaved Lauren and the other Earthseed members despite the evidence of this atrocity and I feel that the ending is at best bittersweet, if not downright bleak.

All in all though, Butler has once again written a compelling and thought-provoking work. I think it is worth reading if you enjoyed the first book. ( )

Solid speculative fiction/dystopia/coming of age story. A fair bit of interesting religion and philosophy twined through it.
Very readable, but didn't really do enough to wow. I will probably read the sequel though, quite an easy book to read. ( )

I wanted to like it but found the versified religion kind of silly and the story otherwise kind of garden variety dystopian near-future stuff. Give me The Road over this for its style. Lauren's condition (trying not to offer spoilers here) was a neat idea that I thought could've been made more of. ( )

This came really highly reviewed, but I didn't really enjoy it. I guess because I wanted something more like traditional science fiction. This read like a historical document. Stuff just happens, and it's all bad. For half the book, our heroine stays in her cul-de-sac as things get worse and worse. Then she walks a lot and various disasters happen. But there's no real plot arc, no sense of growth in the characters, just disaster after disaster.

The world is very carefully and well drawn. The trouble is that it's already 2019 as I read it and it's just a bit too close to home. I can easily see how stuff could just collapse. It made a depressing read. ( )

"All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.

God
is Change.

Parable of the Talents is difficult to classify. Published in 1998, most of the story places around the year 2035, so of course there's futuristic sci-fi components - predictions on global warming and different technologies, but nothing unrealistic. However, the book is also speaks extensively on theology, the connection of the individual to community, and is a direct critique to fundamentalist dogmatic religion. It is also dystopian, so at times is quite dark, and includes graphic violence at times. And, believe it or not, her president's mantra is "Make American Great Again." I thought the story-telling was compelling and her insights were profound. Highly recommended!

There are two books in this short series. Parable of the Sower is the first.

Here are a few brief quotes:

"Some of the faces of her God are biological evolution, chaos theory, relativity theory, the uncertainty principle, and of course the second law of thermodynamics."

From Earthseed: The Books of the Living - "Beware, at war or at peace, more people die of unenlightened self-interest than of any other disease."

My sharing makes me a coward sometimes, but it also makes me resist being a coward.

From Earthseed: The Books of the Living - "All prayers are to self and in one way or another, all prayers are answered. Pray, but beware, your desires, whether or not you achieve them, will determine who you become." ( )