This one reminded me strongly of Ender, but without the war, just the relentless training and the social ejection by his/here her peers. Still, overall a very good book, I will start book 2 right away. It feels like Shogun without the intrigues and civil war, just with the love story and the adaptation to social rules. Meaning it only deals with the human MC POV and completely lacking any social depth for the aliens (no history, religion, beliefs, plots, different parties). The bad (therefore not 5/5): a TOO straightforward easy to read story. Excellent description of the dilemma for collaborators with a benevolent occuppant (but still an invader): should we trade our violent, murdereous freedom for a better, but less free future? Very good anthropological POV of discovering a different society and civilization as an outsider, even if welcomed (but still an alien). Excellent description of what it feels like to be a slave/pet, an inferior people (technologically and maybe also ethically), a 'tolerated' different race, a woman. The good: very good, straightforward easy to read story. Butler including rare images from the author's estate.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler presents a powerful, postapocalyptic interplanetary epic, as well as a ray of hope for humanity. Featuring strong and compelling characters and exploring complex themes of gender and species, Octavia E. Grass will grow, animals will run, and people will learn to survive the planet's untamed wilderness. For the first time since the nuclear holocaust, Earth will be inhabited. The Oankali survive by genetically merging with primitive civilizations-whether their new hosts like it or not. Now it is time for Lilith to lead them back to her home world, but life among the Oankali on the newly resettled planet will be nothing like it was before. They have kept Lilith and other survivors asleep for centuries, as they learned whatever they could about Earth.

Hundreds of years later Lilith awakes, deep in the hold of a massive alien spacecraft piloted by the Oankali-who arrived just in time to save humanity from extinction. Lilith Iyapo has just lost her husband and son when atomic fire consumes Earth-the last stage of the planet's final war. An alien race calls on one woman to revive mankind after Earth's apocalypse in this science fiction classic from the award-winning author of Parable of the Sower.

Xenogenesis by Miriam Allen deFord