Damian Duffy

Incredibly depressing and chaotic with a crisp narrative voice. Laura embodies the struggle of being a teenager with ideas and concerns but struggling to be heard by adults and others around her. She is at an age where she’s questioning everything like her belief in God and her survival. I generally hate dystopian settings, but this one was so immersive and realistic that I couldn’t put it down. Personally, I didn’t care for the art style.
SN: About Bankole... um sir, why did you wait show more until after you had sex with Lauren to ask about her age? It never occurred to him to ask BEFORE? I guess dick too hard to think or whatever >.>

This is story is very bleak and brutal, so I would only recommend this for mature teens. show less

I give this a four only because I have yet to read the actual novel.
I think we want to believe that if we were sent back to 1800's America we would act different and act more like how we act now, but I think Kindred highlights that it would be hard to act how we would act in the 21st Century. What Dana does, as a Black Woman, is survive anyway she can. What Octavia Butler does is show us the reader a brutal reality. I can say that living in the 21st century and living in Pennsylvania I show more received an education that taught the brutal reality of slavery in many ways, and how slavery is still ever present in our modern society no matter how much we ignore that truth. I will never know what it is like to be Black, and that it is why it is important for me as a White Man to read books like Kindred. I cannot say with any certainty what I would do to survive if I was in Dana's shoes, I would hope that I join an abolitionist movement up North and help Harriet Tubman with the Underground Railroad, as my home town was a stop, but I don't know. I am privileged to live in the world I live in now, and Kindred tells me that in 240 pages. show less

This hit a bit close to home when I realised that while it was written in 1993 it's set starting in 2024.... in an America broken and people living in enclaves trying to eke out a living, there's unattended environmental disasters, economic crises and social chaos, so nothing like today, at all...
Lauren Olamina is a preachers daughter living in a gated community trying to survive her hyperempathy (caused by her mother being addicted to Paracetco...) until her gated community is destroyed show more and she has to run with some others to survive. Through her life she develops a religion, Earthseed, and she works to refine it over time and to create a world she can live in.
Oh man does some of this cut close to the bone as I look at America and the world as it is now. I don't think we're far enough away from some of the disaster depicted in this story and it should be read by those who claim that people didn't know about some of the things that they claim are new problems in the world. This is moving and violent and asks questions of the reader. And boy do I hope it doesn't come to pass. show less

This was a hard story to read the first time around. As a graphic novel, it's even harder. Partially because I knew what was coming, and partially because the art depicted the most horrific scenes in a way my imagination never could.

This adaptation did the original novel justice. The plot was perfectly preserved, and the art was hard, gritty, and angular. It wasn't a pretty graphic novel, and it wasn't a pretty story.

Those who have already read Kindred will be pleased with how the story show more translated. Those who haven't will feel punched in the soul... much like I did the first time, and again reading it again as a graphic novel.

Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley. show less