Parable of the Talents

I liked this sequel better than the first one!!
It is difficult to read in some parts of violence and hate, but I have no problems seeing humans capable of those horrific acts, specially of the selfishness of survival.
Lauren's daughter is introduced and I am not so sure I would like her. She is still a super smart and sensible woman.
That uncle Mark... not my favorite at all.
Olamina is complicated and strong. Not sure if I would like her as a mother.
Now... Maybe the Trump administration got some tricks from Jarret Donner, but seeing the America great again slogan to mean discrimination, violent and hate from a book that is almost 20 years older than his campaign made me think the horrible things he would like to do.

All in all, a very good book!

a harrowing, thought provoking experience. I like that the ideas of religion were discussed from all angles and the reader is allowed to make up their own mind about them. Even when the novel discusses literal preaching, the story itself doesn't feel preachy.

Wow, I couldn't stop listening. This book has a way of drawing you in. Written in a format which tells the story from a 1st person account. This is a continuation from the first book and the many struggles Lauren has yet to navigate through to overcome. At times the book left me feeling like there was no hope as it was another bad thing after another but through shared experiences things start to come together, just when hope is lost

Octavia Butler makes her characters so real that you feel as if you know them.
The description of time and setting in so realistic. I think Octavia must have had a prophetic view of the future because so much of what she wrote reall projected the future. She wrote in 1993 and I'm reading this in 2021. Unbelievable!!!??

Excellent narrators. The three voices really brought it to life!

The bit about Jarrods make America great again. Literally made my skin crawl. Either this author new things before we did or they "knew things" we didn't know yet. It's hard to explain all I know it's get ready to live out our reality in fiction. Take it slow lots of deep breaths. Be ready for some jaw dropping similarities that are completely uncanny. I can only do maybe a chapter at a time then I have to digest the it for a day or two. It's baffling jarring unsettling and out right Bazar. Sometimes I don't think I can handle these books it's just to close to real in some very meaningful way you'll only understand if you pay close attention.
You must read these! Everyone should read these books. If more had sooner we might not be in such trouble as a country. It's not just a set of novels. It's almost prophetic. Make America great again indeed. ?

Very well written and narrated. Dark and disturbing at times, but couldn't stop listening.

Parable of the Sower is great. Parable of the Talents was tough to finish. The audiobook narrators paled in comparison to Lynne Thigpen. Also the writing was much worse. In book one, the tragedies were very grounded and nuanced. In book two, everything was hamfisted and lacked any depth.

A worthy sequel to the Parable of the Sower, full of human insight and hopefulness

It's just fascinating how, on point, Butler was with her description of the political influences on society & of course climate change. Loved, the varied perspectives and found this a satisfying conclusion to the two part series.

This book was such a great listen! The Earthseed series was the first book I read by Octavia Butler, and her way of writing and storytelling is transformative! I enjoyed the story, while also reflecting on my own life, society and the problems we are facing. Would give it 10 stars if possible!

I have so many thoughts about this book. I have mixed emotions as well. On one hand, I liked the struggle and the realistic outcomes of some of the characters in this story. On the other hand, I rooted for the reunion with the person Lauren longed to be reunited with, but I was disappointed and saddened by how that storyline played out. I really didn’t like how her family turned their back on Lauren after all she did for them but I also understand the possibility of that being a real outcome. Overall, this book was a great sequel to ‘Parable of the Sower’ but prepare yourself of outcomes you may not want or even expect. Brace yourself to shed a few tears as well.

The book itself is VERY, VERY GOOD. But the audiobook is NOT GOOD and actively takes away and miscolors the narrative. Whoever does the voice for Larkin has the most cringe-inducing dripping-with-venom evil snake voice. It’s literally impossible to listen to her voice and *not* hate her, which I really think goes against the common experience with the text alone. If you’re interested in this title, I strongly recommend reading the text itself and skipping the audio.

This book was so good. I love the narration and the story itself.

Another good story though they one was not as captivating as the first somehow... I felt like I never wore got to know the characters

Sequel to Parable of the Sower. Butler is an interesting writer to be sure. Her books tend to meander, and it's hard to see where they're going. This can be both a strength and a weakness- I like that they don't feel formulaic, but I think they suffer from lack of focus.
Her view of the future is really bleak too!
In the Earthseed world, climate change has basically destroyed the US economy and civilization is barely hanging on at the government level, while at the individual level it's all over- vagrants wander the countryside, armed gangs are everywhere, and many are forced to work as indentured servants for room and board with little hope of ever freeing themselves.

Lauren Olamina is seen as we left her in the previous book, the leader of a rural community in northern California, trying to establish the religion she has created, Earthseed. "God is Change". I don't find the proposed religion very compelling. The villain is the newly elected US President, Jarrett, who is what we would today call a Christian Nationalist. He's been elected to "clean up" things and "Make America Great Again" (that's not my own political comment, it's actually in the text! Of a book written in 1998!).

The book takes an even bleaker turn when Jarrett's Christian America followers invade and enslave the community. Reading gets tough here- it's just so unremittingly bleak. We're also following the journals of Lauren's daughter written much later, which hint at what has happened before we finally get some reveals later on.

So not my favorite Butler book. Most of her work has a bleak future outlook, but this was particularly difficult to take.

Beautiful! Simply Beautiful! I enjoyed this much more than parable of the sower! I enjoyed the journey!

A harsh, grim, hopeful book. I wasn't crazy about Sower, but I'm definitely glad I kept reading the series.

Brilliant and terrifying, so much so that I haven't been able to sleep over the last two nights of finishing this book. So much of it feels like it is happening right now, or is just about to!

diverse fiction (part 2 of 2-part series--slavery, classism, politics/religion, other issues in futuristic dystopian 2020s-2035-2090s America).

Continues the story of the main character as she searches for her abducted daughter and in building/rebuilding Earthseed.

I think I would recommend just reading the first one as a stand-alone. This one was still good, but I just thought the first one was way better in terms of pacing, as this one necessarily had long stretches of time where little happened as characters aged and continued in pursuit of long-ranging goals. You may still decide you want to know what happens to the characters after reading the first one, but the first book does end satisfactorily enough.

Powerful

Powerful, and heartbreaking.

Also amazingly prescient. Butler died 10 years before Trump was elected but here he is in all his Christo-fascist glory.

When you're not shocked about Butler prescient characterizing a revanchist President who wants to "Make America Great Again!" (she actually uses that very phrase in 2000), you're stuck in such a tragic tale of suffering that mere survival and eventual redemption feel like such a wonderful gift.

The story of Olamina and Earthseed continues in Parable of the Talents. Olamina is slowly gathering followers in Acorn and things are looking up for the settlement. Crime is going down, they've found a truck to help them trade further away and life is a little less hard. Shortly after Olamina and Bankole have their daughter, the far right Crusaders take over the settlement and turn Acorn's inhabitants into slaves. The children are kidnapped and adopted into Christian America homes, including baby Larkin. This book is told in Larkin's/Asha's voice and interspersed with writings from Olamina's journal. The book ends with Earthseed rebuilding and beginning to fill The Destiny.

I've said it before and I'll continue saying it: It is a crime that Butler is dead.

I found [book:Parable of the Talents|60932] to be much less hopeful than [book:Parable of the Sower|52397]. No less amazing, but less optimistic. Part of that for sure goes hand in hand with the fact that subject matter of Talents is much heavier than Sower.

I will say this: I am glad I read this book after November 7, 2020. President Jarret in the novel is just far too similar to the orange monstrosity that was just voted out, and had I read this before the election I'm sure it would've sent me spiralling.

I admired this book rather than liked it. It's a well-written and painstakingly imagined dystopia with generally plausible main characters, but the continual, unrelenting violence is nauseating. It made me feel depressed.
Also, the Earthseed philosophy, which was about embracing change and chaos, adapting and growing was couched in terms of God, which jarred very much. For what seems like a non-theist philosophy to use a noun used by religions that have inflicted so much abuse on women, gays, anyone outside the heirarchy's definition of "normal" seems somehow specious.
My final nitpick is that within a few pages Earthseed goes from being a few ragged vagabonds wandering the US byways to a multi-million dollar organisation building interstellar craft to take their people to new planets. The jump is too sudden.

Shit, y'all got to read this. Written twenty? or so years ago and SPOT ON political precognition. The populist demagogue running for president has a slogan you'd recognize. Once in power (that's not a spoiler), he institutes a child separation program tearing babies from the arms of nursing mothers. The parallels are amazing and chilling.

That's not the story though. The story is big, practically multi-generational, and you know what? I bet Jemisin was really strongly inspired by this series (duology?) I see so many threads, moods, plot devices mirrored between this and the Broken Earth trilogy. And it's great.

Another excellent book by Butler. But this one was so painful in many places that I almost stopped reading a couple of times.

really liked the change up in writing style here. served as a great way to frame the story. and a good change from the first book. think I liked this more than the first as well, since it covered more ground.

This story has parallels galore with the Trump cult going on today. Who knows if Butler is a time Traveller, as some speculate. How could she write about the person who got elected in 2032, Jarrett, without knowing how like Trump he is? She wrote this book in 1998, when Clinton was president, and though so many thought he was so awful for getting blow jobs from a white house aide, we were still not aware of the evil we were in for with Bush and Trump.
Butler's Earthseed is a"religion" that could help people who put so much of their belief systems into absolute faith that immortality awaits them when they die, as long as they mouth the"magic words" of Christianity, meanwhile embracing hypocrisy wholehog. I couldn't actually put it on a Facebook profile as my religion, as many reportedly have, but its tenets are absolutely our reality: god is change.

As heartbreaking and human as all her work, this struck very hard right now as it hits very close to home.