I felt that Butler intentionally wrote it this way for our consideration.Įventually when Shori is placed within her Ina culture, this behavior is normalized, but the first instance is still shocking and potentially triggering for some. There is a disturbing subtext here as well, because he is a white man and she is a black girl. She does consent, and he does express doubts about it a few times, but it happens. It’s described, not just mentioned in the text, and she is still, to their knowledge, a young girl. Then in chapter three, she has sex with him.
They have an experience that is similar to what you’d expect in most vampire novels, pleasurable with erotic overtones. 8) When she first meets Wright, he tries to force her to go to the police or the hospital (obviously the guy never had any trauma training), which triggers her to bite him.
However, she presents as a girl who “can’t be more than ten or eleven” (p. Shori is, as the back of the book tells us, a 53-year-old Ina. The major problem I had could be considered a spoiler, although it happens relatively early in the novel (if you are very sensitive to spoilers, please drop down to the final paragraph).
However, there were also some elements that really bothered me. Because Shori herself has no idea of who she is and who she’s surrounded with, we as readers journey with her to slowly learn more about the Ina (her people), and what it means to have a symbiotic relationship with the various humans she collects and joins to her. This book definitely had suspense without terror. It was a good choice, as I enjoy vampire novels, if they’re not too scary. So I looked at what books were available on clearance, nixed all those that were part of a series, read the blurb, and ended up with this one. Several of them are series works, and I didn’t want to get entangled in a series for a new-to-me author without reading an excerpt or anything. It was continually bothering me that I hadn’t read any speculative fiction by PoCs, so I wanted to try one of her books. Science fiction and fantasy are two of my favorites, although I’ll read any genre but horror. I came across this novel because Butler was recommended to me as a major speculative fiction author of color.
The only clues they have to start with are a burnt property and Shori’s own instincts and half-remembering. She doesn’t remember who she is, where she came from, or even what she is, but after she bites Wright, he’s willing to help her find out. Shori wakes up in the woods with a ravenous hunger and a taste for blood. NOTE: This book is recommended for adults only. Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group, New York, 2005, my edition 2007.
0 kommentar(er)
