Book #33 of 2016:

Imago by Octavia E. Butler (Xenogenesis #3)

This is the final book in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy (also called Lilith’s Brood, which is such a worse and more misleading title). Then again, calling these books a trilogy is misleading in its own way: they do build on one another as the series progresses, but they also tell very distinct stories from one another, to the point where the protagonists / narrators in book 2 and book 3 each make no appearances in any of the other books. This was particularly surprising in Imago, since the last book ended with the main character establishing a colony on Mars – and then this one takes place entirely on earth, with that character and the Mars colony only mentioned a few times in passing.

I did like this book, and the series as a whole, though. I didn’t find its story as compelling as Kindred or the Parable / Earthseed saga, but Butler did a great job fleshing out the culture and biology of the alien species here. (And that’s something that became clearer as the narrative shifted over time to more and more alien perspectives.)

My only real hangup is one I had with this author’s vampire novel, Fledgling, which similarly features non-humans overcoming human resistance to mate with them through the use of pheromones. The consent issues there are problematic as hell, but Butler doesn’t seem to care about unpacking that and her narrators don’t even seem to notice. That makes for a disturbing read, and I would have enjoyed more interrogation from human characters on that front. It’s a strange and glaring oversight in a series that otherwise spends a lot of time thinking about people’s right to autonomy and self-determination.

★★★☆☆

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