Name: Ken Gagne's review of Dawn by Octavia E. Butler
Item: Dawn
Rating: 3
Author: Ken Gagne

Octavia E. Butler

xenogenesis

Dawn

Ken Gagne

Lilith lyapo awoke from a centuries-long sleep to find herself aboard the vast spaceship of the Oankali. Creatures covered in writhing tentacles, the Oankali had saved every surviving human from a dying, ruined Earth. They healed the planet, cured cancer, increased strength, and were now ready to help Lilith lead her people back to Earth--but for a price.

Butler throws a lot at her readers and has a remarkable ability to capture and explore gray area. It's fascinating, horrific, and almost 

dense with ideas to unpack. There's not much room for the reader to breathe or process, for better or worse.

elizabeth

Butler throws a lot at her readers and has a remarkable ability to capture and explore gray area. It's fascinating, horrific, and almost too dense with ideas to unpack. There's not much room for the reader to breathe or process, for better or worse.

Butler creates the most "alien" aliens imaginable. I was almost physically ill reading this. A masterful and one of a kind story. 

Mike M

liya n

About a sci-fi as the genre can get. Butler's conception of the most alien aliens is the highlight of this book.

Joe Mccaffery 

Meagan Fischer 

One woman is called upon to rebuild the future of humankind after a nuclear war, in this revelatory post-apocalyptic tale from the award-winning author of Parable of the Sower. When Lilith lyapo wakes from a centuries-long sleep, she finds herself aboard the vast spaceship of the Oankali. She discovers that the Oankali - a seemingly benevolent alien race -- intervened in the fate of the humanity hundreds of years ago, saving everyone who survived a nuclear war from a dying, ruined Earth and then putting them into a deep sleep. After learning all they could about Earth and its beings, the Oankali healed the planet, cured cancer, increased human strength, and they now want Lilith to lead her people back to Earth -- but salvation comes at a price. Hopeful and thought-provoking, this post-apocalyptic narrative deftly explores gender and race through the eyes of characters struggling to adapt during a pivotal time of crisis and change.

Cloudface

I had to take a week to think about this book before I could write a review. It left me feeling deeply unsettled but also awed at the brilliant writing. It’s clear Octavia Butler put a lot of thought into the characters of this story, and it feels like there’s so many layers of meaning you could spend forever peeling them back and analyzing them. The manipulative tactics that the Ooankali used on the humans made them so creepy, and I could feel all of Lilith’s powerlessness when she tried to lead her own group of humans. Overall an amazing book; I think it would be a good choice for both established sci-fi fans and newcomers to the genre.

Maya Johnson

Dawn by Octavia E. Butler is my first finished read of 2023! It was my first time reading this piece of work, and I really enjoyed it.

I have a phobia of aliens, which I've mentioned in the past. I was very creeped out going into this book, but I couldn't put the book down once I started (I finished it in two days!)

This book explores themes of gender, society, humanity - and what that means, sexuality, and I'm sure I'm missing some.

I enjoyed the world building. The aliens and the ship were all so creatively designed. This story just had so many great working parts, and it all came together to make a creepy but wonderfully written story.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4.5/5 Stars

Louise 

** spoiler alert **
           *3.75⭐

I have mixed feelings for this novel.

The premise: an alien race has saved/rescued/captured the last remaining humans after nuclear war certainly intrigued me. 

I enjoyed the start of the novel as it wastes no time plunging you into the story. Lilith wakes up in a 'womb' and we figure out together what is going on. Butler is a fantastic writer, no doubt and the story had the ability to make you feel as uncomfortable/frustrated as our main character.
From part 2-3 the story got slow for me; the world building I overall didn't find that interesting. I also found it pretty heavy on the science & some parts I had to re-read to try and take the information in (that's a me problem).

I enjoyed how the novel highlighted social issues such as race, gender, sex, eating animals etc. Also the name Lilith possibly having biblical links.

However, I am still trying to wrap my head around the coercion of a human by an alien. I find it interesting but also repulsive. 
I can't deny the talent of the writing and I have not read anything like this before but I am in two minds if I will continue with the series.

Midori Kobayashi

bruh what the fuck did i just read.....

this book is just the perfect (horrifying) post-apocalyptic alien sci-fi ever. it was harrowing and made me uncomfortable so many times and yet i loved it. 
It talks about societal issues like racism, xenophobia, slavery, apartheid, totalitarianism, lack of freedom, imprisonment, etc all under the pretext of alien species and I am coming to learn that is something Octavia E. Butler is a master of. 

will be binge-reading the series for sure.

Dweedle 

Absolutely loved this book. A deep exploration on what it means to be “human”, survival, exploitation, and much, much more. Butlers writing is often terse in the right way. This book contains a bizarre sexual encounter with an alien, that left me terrified and highly curious. The kind of book I’ve been thinking about since I put it down.

i think we need to make more contemporary sci-fi writers read books like this one. the intelligence with which butler inquires themes of what makes us human, authonomy, race is unmatched and invaluable.

elif sinem

the intelligence, nuance, themes and characterisation that this has WHEW.......

vins

Real rating would be much closer to 4.5 stars. 

This wasn't my first introduction to Butler's work; I've read her novelette 'Bloodchild' beforehand, so I kind of knew what to expect diving in. It did not disappoint at all, though I'd argue that 'Bloodchild' was way more viscerally intense.

Like 'Bloodchild', 'Dawn' was an unnerving read with lots of delicately written heavy conversations. Despite all this though, Butler's writing employs simple, highly accessible language that makes it easy to inhale everything in one sitting. I could barely put the book down for the second half of it. And y'all, this is my taurus ass speaking, but normally I love pretty proses; y'know, the ones you'd find on tumblr homepage decorated with colorful highlighter and penned with lots of curly vines and flowers. And yet, I adore Butler's writing so much. It sucks you in, it's consistently compelling, and it allows you space to think and reflect while reading. She doesn't need smokescreens of pretty proses when her writing is already bursting with substance. 

Which also brings me to the reason why I'm nicking that half a star from the rating. Butler loves to examine her characters' psychology through dialogues (and she's brilliant at it; our main character hardly had any backstory, yet she's very likeable and well-formed), but sometimes she doesn't ground the scenes to its setting enough—especially in the first half of the story—to the point that they read like talking heads to me. Yea the setting was dull and minimalist in the first half, but it didn't have to be dull and minimalist in writing too. That, and the uninterrogated heteronormativity of the story. Just seems weird that Lilith, the incipient anthropologist, readily accepted the Oankali's three sexes and yet the only (undignified) mention of homosexuality in the book was immediately brushed off.

I debated very long between putting this as a 4 or 5-starred review on GR. Eventually I settled on 4 because as much as I love this book, I don't really ascribe to the fatalistic pessimism view on humanity that tints its second half. It's not like I think Butler is wrong: I'm not a Black woman: I don't see what Butler had seen and experienced. It really just boils down to my personal narrative preferences. Regardless of that though I still freaking love this and will definitely finish the whole Xenogenesis series.

Simon Crocker

Things have a tendency to escalate very quickly from the slower moments in this book haha. It's a very thought provoking book that asks many questions about sexuality, the constructs of society, and what exactly it means to be human. Curious to see where the rest of the series leads.

Judy Hudgins

It's not a 'beach read' for sure. Very unsettling to read and to go through the issues Lilith goes through.

An alien race calls on one woman to revive mankind after Earth’s apocalypse in this science fiction classic from the award-winning author of Parable of the Sower. Lilith Iyapo has just lost her husband and son when atomic fire consumes Earth—the last stage of the planet’s final war. Hundreds of years later Lilith awakes, deep in the hold of a massive alien spacecraft piloted by the Oankali—who arrived just in time to save humanity from extinction. They have kept Lilith and other survivors asleep for centuries, as they learned whatever they could about Earth. Now it is time for Lilith to lead them back to her home world, but life among the Oankali on the newly resettled planet will be nothing like it was before. The Oankali survive by genetically merging with primitive civilizations—whether their new hosts like it or not. For the first time since the nuclear holocaust, Earth will be inhabited. Grass will grow, animals will run, and people will learn to survive the planet’s untamed wilderness. But their children will not be human. Not exactly. Featuring strong and compelling characters and exploring complex themes of gender and species, Octavia E. Butler presents a powerful, postapocalyptic interplanetary epic, as well as a ray of hope for humanity. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler including rare images from the author’s estate.

Jessica Smith

Dawn is, in many parts, an uncomfortable book to read. Butler really does not want to give the reader any easy answers, but instead makes us grapple with some tough dilemmas. The prose is deceptively easy to read, because the real struggle is trying to work out who you're “barracking for”, or what you want to happen.

Dawn is set in the aftermath of an all-consuming war which has wiped out human life on Earth. Lilith, the protagonist, wakes up aboard a spaceship – not for the first time – on which she's been woken up and put to sleep, and woken up and put to sleep, over and over again and put through a range of weird experiences over these bouts of wakefulness. At last, her captors present themselves to her, and explain what's happening.

Her captors are aliens, a species known as the Oankali. They perpetuate their own species through genetic engineering, basically hybridising themselves with other species they encounter in the galaxy. Seeing that humanity was just about the wipe itself out anyway, they've rescued as many of the survivors as they could, and now plan to splice those humans' DNA with Oankali DNA and (eventually) set those humans free to repopulate the Earth. Through their tests, they've determined that Lilith has the ideal personality to learn all about the Oankali and their culture, teach other survivors about the mission, and ultimately lead a new human society on Earth.

There is a fundamental flaw in the Oankali's plans, of course, which is that Lilith and pretty much every other human in the book abhors the idea of having their DNA tampered with and producing not-fully-human offspring. Although the Oankali are kind and well-intentioned in many ways, they refuse point-blank to consider the humans' autonomy in this regard, no matter how many times Lilith tries to explain things to them.

But as I said before, Butler couldn't make things as binary as “Oankali evil meddlers, humans good freedom-seekers”. Many of the humans who appear in this book are actually not very nice – there are incidents of rape and murder – while most of the Oankali are very caring, if prone to patronising behaviour. Oankali society is communal and theoretically non-hierarchical; extended Oankali names convey how you're connected to the broader society. They're far more disgusted by violence than humans are, and eat exclusively vegetarian diets. They have the ability to heal humans' wounds through touch (and give them pleasurable sex-analogue experiences); it confounds them that most humans find this alarming and terrifying, when in their minds they're only trying to do good.

But the overarching point that Butler seems to be making is that even if Oankali society is “better” than humans', humans must be free to decide their own fate without outside interference – even if, as the Oankali point out, that decision was apparently to wipe out the entire species in nuclear war. That position seems a bit dubious, but on the other hand you can't deny that the forced impregnation, DNA tampering, etc. that the Oankali go ahead with is icky, too (and has a real-life parallel to chattel slavery, when slavers felt entitled to treat other people as livestock and “breed them” accordingly). Lilith tries to take a middle position, where she's on good terms with individual Oankali and helps them out wherever possible, while still planning to bail on them and vanish into the jungle as soon as they let her loose on Earth. Most of the other humans hate this strategy though for being, in their view, too soft.

This is a many-layered story; there is also commentary on gender, the difficulty of falling in love in an environment where you have little control over your life, and more. The dominant themes are shared in common with other Butler books that I've read, like Anyanwu's efforts to escape Doro's clutches in Wild Seed or Teray's conflict between being compromised but safe or free but endangered in Patternmaster. That said, the reason I've rated this book lower than those two is mainly that I was not so emotionally invested in it. Intellectually invested, sure, but the characterisation wasn't as gripping. Still, this might improve over the rest of the trilogy, and I'm still interested to see how things play out from here.

Mahasin S Ameen

This is one of the best books I've read, not only in the last few months, but possibly ever. Butler is just hands down one of the best science fiction writers there is.

I do have to comment on the cover that I got, it's hilarious with two white women on the cover both with awkward Farrah Fawcett hair.

Ken Gagne &
Dawn by Octavia E. Butler

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