Butler's ability to write stories that are viscerally unsettling and yet almost painfully difficult to put down is unparalleled. We are discomfited from the beginning and it only gets more complex as the story evolves. Butler's commitment to the story means she eschews easy answers about, in particular, whether her aliens are either right or justified in how the treat the humans. I kept waiting for the narrative signal that would answer who was "right" and tell the reader how to feel. Butler categorically refuses that kind of easy closure, leaving us to find out way ourselves. Like in Parable of the Sower, Lilith's POV is precisely that: a way of seeing. We are, I think, meant to take her ability to see further to heart, but Butler is far more interested in opening her readers' eyes than directing their thoughts. Dawn wants its readers to think about what makes us human, what makes us stubborn, and what makes up screw up the way we do. Though the premise is far less plausible than the Parable books, the story itself rings with the same sense of truth.