#OctaviaEButler unfinished trilogy: #ParableOfTheSower and #ParableOfTheTalents will be one of my top 2020 reads, in all its glorious violence, presidency folly, addicts and extreme poverty, rawness and hope.
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God is change.
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A few words: meet 18yo Lauren Olamina, daughter of a minister, living with her family in a compound outside which everything's burning and roads are for addicts, who set fire to the world, and miserable ppl who try to flee North. She knows everything is bound to change and has plans. So when things do change for the worse, she takes the road and builds her own community and her own cult.
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I read the first when California was burning, and riots seemed to be everywhere, so the book being set in 2025 seemed only to mirror current times. I got the true picture of it, though, when I started the second. Only then did I realize, it's all about the birth of a cult, a cult I'd be eager to be part of. A cult where the only true power is change, and the only thing one can do to survive and thrive is embrace change. Hence: God is change, quite literally, and the future of humanity (Earthseed) is "to take root among the stars", as this young girl, a sharer/shaper whose condition makes her physically feel others pain, foresees.
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It's hyper violent, as in endless TW: rape, murders, kids murders, torture, camps as in death camps, slavery and sexual slavery, cannibalism.
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But it's more about struggling and find the strength in others, in the community, and in oneself to survive, and then live love and grow and thrive. (In an unrealistic turn near the end of the second but whatever). It's a epic marvelous read. Not for the faint of heart