So I've been holding off on substantive reviews for this series until I finish the final book, which I have...
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It makes a bit more sense to know that this is the first book written and that the other books are written to tell the story of how this particular future came to be. But still.
The thing about Butler is that she makes everyone else look shallow and comprehensible. It's not that she isn't making a point in her stories; she obviously is and there is so much to say and think about when it comes to slavery and humans and the possibilities of what we become and, more than anything else, the drive to survive.
And its also very clearly part of the story and unignorable, yet Butler doesn't offer answers or explanations. Her work is so often a hypothesis - if we are X, the future is Y. If I posit this human, these humans will come next. And you end up reading her experiment and trying to decide how you feel about her humans. And whether they are the humans we want to be.
Ugh, this series makes my brain hurt, but in the best way.