Parable of the Talents (original 1998; edição 2019)

Earthseed, a new religion based in science, rational thought, and the concept of God as change, struggles to survive in America's worsening dystopia. Eerily, though published in 1998, this book predicted that a "tired, gray shadow of a man" would run for President against a Christofascist demagogue whose slogan is "Make America Great Again." The latter's supporters burn some non-Protestants ("witches") at the stake and enslave others with high-tech slave collars.

I liked Book 1 but find this sequel disappointing. It's more plot-driven and not as fresh and thought-provoking. Though it does have some interesting observations on:

- How to spread a religion that promises no salvation or comfort
- How to run a survivalist community
- How love works in a broken family
- Society's biggest problems are usually caused by failing to do anything about them when they're small but obvious and manageable.
- War is not just a failure of diplomacy, but of stupid leaders who don't know what else to do. It's an easier path than peace.
- Prayer works. It's not talking to God; it's self-talk. It gives you a feeling of control so you can get things done.[/list]

The author died before writing the third book, but this second book gives closure. The closure feels rushed, but in it I felt influences of Heinlein and Card. ( )

Ce roman, suite de La parabole du semeur, est une œuvre puissante, féroce, dure, du début à la fin. La plupart des situations auxquelles l'héroïne est confrontée sont physiquement terribles, et le peu qui ne le sont pas sont psychologiquement cruelles. Alors certes, la fin du roman est une grande note d'espoir mais que ce fut dur d'y arriver. On ressort marqué de cette lecture, mais également bluffé par ce que l'auteur a construit avec ce livre et celui qui le précède, La parabole du semeur. Une très bonne lecture ! ( )

We all know that Butler is an awesome writer. She is one of my all time favorite Sci-Fi authors. She really understands how to capture the reader and write about difficult subjects. Her prose, character development and world building are superb and this book is no exception.

This is the second book in the duology. It is really good; however, I liked the first book better. All the religious stuff got to me after a while. A little over the top for my tastes. Though I did appreciate how she explored the idea that religion can be both good and bad.

So much food for fodder in Butler's books. This would be an awesome book for a book club discussion. Just one word of caution, there are numerous difficult topics in this book, including, human trafficking, rape, murder, slavery, etc. ( )

A direct sequel to Parable of the Sower, primarily continuing the story of Lauren Oya Olamina and her quest to found Earthseed, a faith but not religion, based on change and destiny. There's an interesting framing device added: most of the novel is from her journals, as with Sower, but now there's commentary, often quite negative, by Olamina's daughter. The emotional source of that enmity is left to be revealed at the very end, a bitter arc to counterpoint the journal's path. That path goes very dark for quite a while, but as Sower made clear, Olamina is a survivor.

Trigger alert for those of us still recovering from the presidency of 2016-2020: the primary source of darkness is a right wing President who ran on the slogan "make America great again", around whom grew an army of modern-day Christian Crusaders. Butler's 1998 portrayal of the breadth and depths of the roots of the movement is frighteningly spot on.

One other side note: every chapter of both books begin with poems from Olamina's Book of Earthseed. While they did not do much for me, I was intrigued by their similarity to the poetry of St Theresa of Avila.

Highly recommended. We are awash in dystopian fiction, but few have the richness and inner core of Butler duology. ( )

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. ( )