S'okay. It's Octavia Butler's first novel, and it reads like one. Not bad if you've read her other stuff, but a terrible introduction if you haven't. ( )

This is the first book Octavia Butler published, and it's fantastic. It gives a great view of a wholly different world, so different you don't realize it's still Earth until you read the next in the series (chronologically, this is the last, but by publication date, the next one is "Mind Of My Mind", which is one of my all-time favorite books). This one shows us the struggle a young Patternist named Teray faces as he tries to stake his claim to his own part of the world (his own life, really), and the trials he faces between people who fear his power and power he's afraid of taking. Wonderful stuff. I don't visualize much as I read. Butler's protagonists are almost universally Black, and it's only that knowledge that gives me a mental image of any of them at all. However, in this book in particular, not a lot of attention is paid to race. I wonder if that's deliberate as it was her first novel and she needed more of a foothold to establish herself before making race more of a face-front issue in her work. ( )

Butler’s very first book, this is truly difficult to read and get through. Disjointed. ( )

Great Environment - environment based plot, too short, not enough plot, very original. ( )

An odd story, and an interesting tie-in to Clay's Ark. Human nature and our need for control. ( )