Adulthood Rites

Summary: Lilith’s son Akin, a human “construct,” is kidnapped by resisters and raised in one of their settlements, and realizes his own unique and risky calling.

Akin was a male child born of Lilith, the main character of the first volume in this series. He is the first male “construct,” He is the fruit of a human-alien union–a human father and an Oankali mother and father, and a Ooloi, neither male nor female. Outwardly he looks human, except for his tongue, through which he senses the world, and can also kill. He is also unlike any human in language and intelligence. In months, he can speak like an adult. One day a refugee from a resister settlement, Tino shows up and is accepted into the community of Lo. Over time, Akin show more and Tino develop a special bond, the beginning of an unanticipated connection with the resisters, humans unwilling to bond with the Oankali, and therefore sterile.

One day, Akin and Tino are out when kidnappers seize Akin, leaving Tino for dead. After a harrowing journey, he ends up in Phoenix, a resister settlement hungry to acquire children if they cannot conceive their own. He becomes the child of Gabe and Taft, developing bonds with them even as he grieves the severed bonds with his own siblings in Lo, bonds he can never fully regain. Over time, he recognizes the contradiction of the drive to live, and the drive to kill in humans, and that they are a dying race on a dying planet, with or without the Oankali. He also grasps that there is another possibility, one only possible if he becomes an Akjai, a kind of go-between.

It is risky. Though rescued at last by Lilith and his family, he must give up Lo, embrace training with the Oankali, and then risk return to a Phoenix, even as he transitions to adulthood. And there is no guarantee they will accept the way to a new life he will propose, or even survive the attempt.

This is such an imaginative series. Butler continues to explore the implication of the “trade” the Oankali engage in with humans, and what human-alien progeny might be like. It also parses out the implications of the miscalculation that many humans would refuse the trade the Oankali offered. It strikes me that this is analogous to the blindness of earthly colonizers who cannot grasp why native peoples would refuse the “blessings” of civilization, even when this meant inevitable extinction. But Butler also sees another side to this, that humans faced with the struggle to survive will resort to suspicion and violence and killing, even at the continual diminishment of their numbers.

Can this dying race in a post-nuclear world be saved? Will Akin’s desperate effort work, even with a remnant? And what of us–a people at each others’ throats when faced with a global pandemic, a rapidly warming climate, rising lawlessness and violence in many quarters, and the shadow of thermo-nuclear destruction under which I’ve lived since childhood? Why do we both love life and seem committed to self-destruction? What hope is there for us? show less

[b:Adulthood Rites|116249|Adulthood Rites (Xenogenesis, #2)|Octavia E. Butler|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1390116834l/116249._SY75_.jpg|249001] follows up with the story of Lilith and the alien invasion / our alien saviors set out in [b:Dawn|60929|Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1)|Octavia E. Butler|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388290339l/60929._SY75_.jpg|1008111]. This time around though, the main point of view follows Akin. A first generation child of an Oankali/human/Ooloi five parent mating--it's about as weird and interesting as it sounds-who starts the story as a rather precocious (for a human) one year old.

It's fascinating to see a more alien and childlike show more point of view on the world [a:Octavia E. Butler|29535|Octavia E. Butler|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1242244143p2/29535.jpg] built, especially as Akin spends a chunk of time among pure human resistors, becoming something of their champion.

It continues the crazy world building with the biotech heavy (almost to the point of exclusion) Oankali and the last gasps of humanity / first breaths of something new. The main story is chock full of moral quandaries--like do the humans have a right to continue to exist as human or do the Oankali really know what's best in the very very long run. Especially given that we learn that when the Oankali leave, they'll be taking just about all of what makes Earth 'Earth' with them. A bit more complicated after all.

It really does make you think. About how terrible great and terrible humanity can be--are we even worth saving?--and about how sometimes even aliens need a bit of a human perspective.

A solid sequel. show less

In conclusion, Octavia Butler is amazing.

I'm not even sure where to begin. The Xenogenesis trilogy is completely unlike anything I've ever read before. The closest I can come in comparison is to The Left Hand of Darkness: this is a book with rich, thorough world/species building, compelling characters, a solid plot and more theme than you can shake a stick at. Butler understands that meaningful speculative fiction asks "what if" questions to cause readers to reflect on the world as it is. And here, she does that artfully, weaving in questions about whether human nature is intrinsically violent, how different we are able to tolerate our children being from us and still perceive them as "ours," whether it is better to die sticking with show more the familiar, or be irrevocably mutated and survive.
In there are implications about environmentalism, gender relations, racial relations, consent, and warfare.
But all of this lies under an intricate plot, and beautifully devised characters: the bitter, resigned, maternal Lillith; the optimistic, daring Akin; sweet Tino and others. The Oankali as an alien species feel so real: Butler has developed for them a physicality, a culture, a morality, subdivisions, etc. such that it is as easy to predict how an Oankali will feel as a human character, and yet they feel so alien that it's easy to feel that undercurrent of revulsion towards them that is felt by the characters. show less

This second volume of the Xenogenesis trilogy follows Akin, one of Lilith's offspring with partial Oankali heritage, through his early childhood and up into adult metamorphosis. The story is much concerned with his early travels on Earth and his "adventures" among the humans who have rejected the Oankali. (They live in the Amazon basin in a much-changed jungle environment.) About one-third of the way into the book there's a startling revelation about the Oankali intent for the future of Earth and its human inhabitants. The Oankali are long-time long-distance travellers, after all, who "trade" with other species as they roam the galaxy.

There's a huge amount of ethical/moral ambiguity in this book, along with culture studies and show more reflections upon life, as we learn more about the Oankali, their interesting biology, their environment, and the physical transitions they undergo. Big questions loom everywhere. (And some readers might find the biology a little "disturbing", by the way.)

As the book nears its conclusion we come to the idea of colonizing Mars... But it's probably not going to be how we in the 21st century might commonly imagine things would go. The Oankali, as you'll remember from volume one, generally use DNA to perform tasks for which humans use machinery. And their "ships" are enormous living creatures that carry closed ecosystems across the vast expanses of space...

So far, the series presents huge ideas and environments as a backdrop to individual "biographies" of a few main characters. In that sense, it's idea-driven fiction. Most characters in both books are minor, but the protagonist Akin (and Lilith in volume one) are deeply explored.

This is humanistic sci-fi at its best, I think. Should be required reading for first-year college students in humanities and sciences both. ;-) Now, I can't wait to get into the next book... Totally not gonna be Flash Gordon. show less

Nobody writes quite like Octavia Butler. In the midst of this (second in the series), I was wondering if I wanted to spend more time with it, but by the time I reached the end, I have no doubt I will finish the trilogy and read any other of Butler's books that have escaped me thus far. Though she deals in sophisticated ways with questions of difference, race, gender, sex, biology, choice, etc. she never falls into the black/white good/evil dichotomies that infect far too many science fiction and (especially) fantasy novels. Her aliens are truly alien, and yet have even more power to inspire the reader to reflect on what is (uniquely?) human. Compromises are made; bad things done by good creatures (and vice versa); there are no perfect show more answers; these novels are Butler's way of portraying the struggle. show less

I find it oddly difficult to review an Octavia Butler book without filling it to the brim with cringe inducing sentimentality and hyperbole but I'll be damned if she doesn't make me all pensive and a touch maudlin every time I read her books. I get this feeling that her kindness and compassion always seep through her books and it makes me feel a little wistful that she is no longer with us.

Adulthood Rites is the second volume of the Lilith's Brood trilogy. In a nutshell it is the story of the last humans living under the domination of seemingly benign aliens (“Oankali”) who saved our species from extinction on an almost destroyed Earth. The saved people are taken away to live on board their spaceships while the aliens clean up the show more Earth to make it habitable again. The first book [b:Dawn|60929|Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1)|Octavia E. Butler|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388290339s/60929.jpg|1008111] is about life on board the ship, Adulthood Rites is about mankind’s return to repopulate the Earth and the price we have to pay for the alien’s rescue.

This second volume shifts the focus of the story to the point of view of a new protagonist Akin who is the son of Lilith lyapo, the main character of [b:Dawn|60929|Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1)|Octavia E. Butler|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388290339s/60929.jpg|1008111], and two other alien parents. Interbreeding with the alien is the price we have to pay for being rescued from extinction. The mating system is pretty weird but don’t expect to read any scene of kinky threesome sexual congress. For the sci-fi enthusiasts there is plenty of mind blowing bio-technology with living ships, habitats food processing units and other bizarre devices. The Oankali aliens with their versatile tentacles, metamorphosis and third sexual gender are wondrously imagined. The post-apocalypse Earth being repopulated is also very vivid.

The main virtue of the book for me though is the ideas, themes or principles behind these wild inventions. Ms. Butler communicates her points through story telling without the narrative ever coming across like preaching. One of the major themes of this book is man’s “genetic contradiction” which is our tendency to combine intelligence with hierarchical behavior which eventually leads to blowing ourselves up. According to the aliens, left to our own devices Man will always self-destruct but we are too valuable as a species to allow becoming extinct so they have modified the humans to only procreate with at least one alien partner.

The story is full of dilemma and moral quandaries, everybody is right and wrong at same time. If I was reading this book as a teenager I would have been swept away by the sense of wonder and the world building. Reading it as an adult I find much more interesting issues to think about. Ms. Butler’s character development talent is second to none. They are so believable that sometimes the well-intentioned but obstinate characters actually make me angry. There are no mustache twirling villains or (God forbid) “Dark Lords” here but the ordinary people seem much more dangerous.

You will probably want to skip this paragraph because it will probably make you roll your eyes. I just want to say that I think Octavia Butler epitomizes the best of what a human being could aspire to be in term of decency, kindness and wisdom. I am not looking forward to reading all her books because then there won’t be any more. That said I am going to read the final book in this trilogy, [b:Imago|60934|Imago (Xenogenesis, #3)|Octavia E. Butler|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389478182s/60934.jpg|6589483], immediately after this! show less

I liked the first book in this trilogy, Dawn, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy this book so much more. To give credit where it's due, this is probably because Dawn did all the grunt work laying the foundations for this story. It had to introduce the Oankali, their very alien biology, technology and social structures, as well as a large cast of characters which (many of them) remain relevant in this instalment as well. Now that the reader is already familiar with all of that, Adulthood Rites can move on and just tell the story. It also helps that, where the protagonist of the last book was the somewhat prickly Lilith Iyapo (not that you would blame her or anything…), the protagonist here is the somewhat more likeable Akin, her show more son. Akin is the product of the Oankali's plans for humanity: with two human parents and three Oankali ones, Akin is a hybrid of both species, uniquely placed to understand the outlooks and concerns of them both.

So, since the end of the previous book, the action has moved to Earth. On the one hand, there are villages of humans and Oankali living together, building the new kind of society the Oankali had envisaged. On the other hand, there are villages of “resisters”, who are determined to live without the Oankali. The Oankali have mostly left them alone, except that they have sterilised them, because they believe it would be immoral to allow humans to pass on the “gene” that makes them commit violence against each other.

Because the resisters can't have their own children, they have resorted to abducting hybrid children who look mostly human, which doesn't really make sense considering their entire goal is to have nothing to do with the Oankali, but you get the impression that Butler is making some commentary on how humans regularly try to “solve” problems with solutions that make no sense. (See: “our society is damaging the climate so badly that the long-term stability of our food and water supplies is in doubt… let's stick our finger in our ears and keep electing governments who pledge to keep on doing it!”) So, the real jumping-off point for this story is when a group of brutish resisters kidnap the very young Akin, intending to sell him for a high price to some resister family. He winds up in the care of Tate and Gabriel, who figured prominently in the last novel. They won't let him go home to his own village, and no one from his village comes to retrieve him, so he is left to grow up for a number of years among the resisters.

The beauty of this novel is the tenderness and emotional nuance with which it portrays Akin's situation. It pains Akin deeply to be separated from his family – especially from his closest sibling, who he is supposed to be near during a critical bonding period – and there are some residents of the resister village who are all kinds of nasty and terrifying. But Tate is always caring towards him, and through his bond with her he comes to empathise with – even if not agree with – the resisters' position. They don't want to live at the sufferance of the Oankali, who are so convinced they know better than humanity what's best for us that they treat humans with the same condescension that we might reserve for bratty children. They want to live free, including free to make mistakes if they want. Although Akin eventually returns to his home village and the Oankali, he does so in a unique position: he has the insight into the resisters' motives that the Oankali lack, and the ability to speak to the Oankali and be listened to that the humans (including non-resisters, like Lilith) lack.

Just like the first book, this is not a story about “goodies” and “baddies”. It's sharply critical of human society, and human nature itself (or at least human nature under capitalism…), and in many ways it makes you think humanity would be better off if it gave up and acquiesced to the will of the unbearably smug Oankali. But, as in many of her other works, Butler here seems to suggest it is better to be free, to not be under the control of any other party, than it is to act in your own self-interest.

So, what will happen in the third and final book, Imago? I would guess that some kind of conciliation will have to occur between the resisters and the Oankali, perhaps brokered by the growing generation of hybrids, but it remains to be seen. I'm sure I'll be picking up the next instalment to find out sooner rather than later. show less