Fledgling by Octavia Butler

Fledgling by Octavia Butler
Butler is by far my favorite author. She has deep main characters that are usually large, strong, capable, intelligent black women who are different than the mainstream and not afraid of those differences. In many ways the main characters of her novels represent an idealized form of me. I also like the fact that her characters look and act like real people. Often in science fiction I find that the characters are often unreal in their beauty, intelligence, intuition, etc. Butler keeps it real with her characters-they have flaws-real ones-and it increases the feeling they are real and the world they live in is real.
Fledgling is at essence a Vampire novel. With the recent interest in all things Vampire-I should not be surprised to see this novel written by Butler. Yet, I was surprised. In some ways disappointed-which is unfair in a sense. For what the novel is at its base-a story of Vampires-it is very well written and believable. The culture, setting, cause-story of Vampirism as it occurs on this novel resonates as real. If it was written by someone else I would be pretty darn impressed. However, it was written by Butler and I expect more of her. I expect ground breaking from her. This is well and tightly written, but not at all ground breaking. I would still consider Anne Rice to be the Goddess of “ground breaking” Vampire plots. Yet, the plot is pretty well written, semi-driven by what we need to find out for the novel to work-but not forcibly driven, it flows well.
Shori –the main character-wakens in alone, blind, badly hurt and starving in a cave. She is hiding from sun light and seeking food as the novel opens. Eventually she heals enough to find her way out of the cave. She can not remember who she is, what she is or where she comes from. She wanders until she finds a familiar landscape and finds the burned out remains of a community. She can not remember specifics, but she believes this was her home and wonders if others of her community made it out of the fire like she did. Down and out by the destruction of her community, depressed by inability to remember anything about her previous life-even her name-she is wandering by the side of the road when she is picked up by a young man on his way home from work. Wright, a hairy white man of 23 sees what appears to be a 10 yr old black girl wandering aimlessly and picks her up to get her help. In reality, Shori, is a 53 year old Ina and Wright is the one who needs to be seeking help. Shori bites Wright which forms a bond between them and begins to feed on him as well as others in the small rural area he lives in. Eventually she contacts her father and learns her name and then name of her race-Ina. Ina’s are an ancient race of being who form a relationship with humans-the humans are the Ina’s “symbionts”. Symbionts provide blood, companionship and family for Ina’s. Ina’s provide their humans with longer, healthier lives. These types of relationships are a common theme in Butler’s books. Ina’s are the basis for modern Vampire legends. They can not be out in sunlight-it burns them, they survive largely off of human blood, they seduce and bewitch and are able to control the humans they feed off of. The major difference being that the Ina can not reproduce by “making” humans into Ina-in fact it is impossible to do so. Ina’s are born into that race. Shori-is a result of genetic manipulation on the part of her Ina parents. Ina’s are largely Caucasian in appearance-but Shori is black like the human female who contributed to her DNA. She is also a “day-walker” able to stay awake and function during the daylight hours and she represents years of genetic research into improving the dying race of Ina.
A good novel, definitely feels like the first of a series. I found myself surprisingly uncomfortable with idea that Shori looks like a 10 year old girl but is having sex with a 23 year old male during the first 50 pages of the novel. Even when it comes to be known that she is no child-it still felt like molestation. Shori is described as flat-chested and hairless-a molesters wet dream. As a mother it bothered me.

Metallic Love by Tanith Lee

This book is the sequel to Silver Metal Lover. I read Silver Metal Lover a few years ago. It was a sweet, if predictable, love story with a sci fi twist. It raised interesting questions about what defines humanity and can robots develop souls. I liked it quite abit. So, when I saw that a sequal was available I was looking very forward to reading it. First off let me say the book may be a sequel to Silver Metal Lover-but it is a very different tone. No sweet love, no questing robot seeking a soul, no tragic female lover leaving everything he knows to follow her heart and then living with her true love on little more than love in an idyllic romantic setting. Loren-the main female characer and narrator of this book, is no Jane for sure. In fact, I liked Loren a whole lot more than I ever liked Jane. Loren was everything Jane was not-poor, outside of society, no parents, confident-very confident sexually, grounded, realistic-likable in a way Jane never was. Loren is telling this story at the same age that Jane was telling Silver Metal Lover-roughly 16/17. Yet it is almost as if Loren is the adult version of Jane. If that is case with Loren and Jane, I lack words to define the difference between Silver and Verlis. At the end of Silver Metal Lover, Silver is dismantled and Jane approaches her mother-rich influential cruel mother-to get her manuscript about Silver published. Metallic Love takes place 12 years or so later. META has revamped the Robot Lover program-with a few minor changes. Part of the controversey over the original Robot Lover program featuring Silver was that the robots were so complex as to be ale to pass as human. META has gotten rid of that feature, all robots are poreless, flawless, extremely beautiful but not designed to be able to pass as human. They are also more advanced, they can change physical shape, form clothing, jewelry and weapons out of their very flesh. Also, a fourth color has been added-the original silver, gold and copper are back-new to this line of pleasure robots is onyx-black onyx made from the black metal of the asteroid in orbit over earth. Loren's mother was a prositute and when Loren is just a baby she takes her to the orphanage she was raised in and leaves her there to be raised by religious fanatics. One day on kitchen duty Loren discovers a loose floor board in the kitchen area-hidden under the floor board is Jane's Book-the story of Jane and Silvers romance. Loren reads the book over and over until she has it memorized. At the age of 11 Loren runs away from the orphanage and happens into a man who hires her to work in his house cleaning business. Six years later Loren is successful enough to have her own crew working for her. One of the girls on her crew calls her to let her know that the client who's they are cleaning is having a psychotic break. Loren hurries over to save the client and her employees. When she gets there she sees Silver on the screen and a newscast saying that Meta is releasing a new line of metallic pleasure robots. Loren leaves immediately to investigate. Through an odd series of events she ends up Verlis's first lover-his test run before his model is fully launched. What she discovers is that just as she is not Jane, Verlis (the silver robot who has been rebuilt from the original Silver/s body parts and has all of his memories) is not at all Silver. Verlis remembers Silvers' life and especially his "death" and has a plan so that does not happen to him or the rest of the metallic "team".
~~~~Where ever you go, There you are!