Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kindred | 1979 | Octavia E. Butler | Buy |
| 2 | Fledgling | 2005 | Octavia E. Butler | Buy |
Octavia E. Butler wrote two novels that do not belong to any of her series: Kindred and Fledgling. They are very different books, but both share Butler’s characteristic interest in bodies, power, and what people do to survive when the terms are unfair.
Kindred (1979) is the more famous of the two. A Black woman named Dana, living in 1970s California, is repeatedly pulled back in time to an antebellum Maryland plantation. She cannot control when it happens or when she will return. The plantation belongs to a white ancestor of hers — a man whose survival she is in some way connected to, and whose worst impulses she witnesses up close. The novel is direct about the violence of slavery and refuses to let Dana, or the reader, stay at a comfortable distance from it. It has remained in print continuously since its first publication.
Fledgling (2005) was Butler’s last novel, published just over a year before her death. It follows a young-seeming woman who wakes up injured and with no memory, and gradually discovers she is a variant of a vampire species called Ina. The novel uses its vampire premise to examine questions of race, memory, and chosen family — particularly the bonds between an Ina and their human companions, which are both symbiotic and, Butler makes clear, complicated by the power imbalance inherent in the relationship.