Parable of the Talents

Parable of the Sower was filled with terrible events, but usually showed hope and progress. This book has a long period of sadness and cruelty. While still a good book, it can be hard to take, depending on your moods.

The sequel to Parable of the Sower, this novel provided much more depth to the initial story line Lauren, the protagonist, provided in the first novel. Parable of the Talents fast forwards years from where Parable of the Sower leaves off, opening with the community of Acorn at its peak. After a series of unfortunate twists and turns, Lauren finds life turned upsidedown and she searches for the one thing that matters most in her life. This novel further explores the realm of "cults" in an America not familiar to us today. Butler's work once again left me craving more as I realized and contemplated the thematic elements relevant to life today.

Stunning sequel to Parable of the Sower. Answers most, if not all, the questions raised in the first novel. Of course, the future of mankind is left pretty much wide open, but then, isn't it always?........CR

Stunning sequel to Parable of the Sower. Answers most, if not all, the questions raised in the first novel. Of course, the future of mankind is left pretty much wide open, but then, isn't it always?........CR

This was a fairly interesting and involving book. Unfortunately, at my age and life experience, I've read so many SF and Post Apocalyptic novels, this one's story line was a little predictable. Even the main character's "New Religion" did not seem believable to me. After reading extremely well-developed dogmas as in DUNE, I was easily bored. Obviously, this was written for a younger audience.

Although I liked Parable of the Sowers better; this is a thought provoking novel which has profound parallels with our own troubled times. These are hard to like characters; especially Lauren's half brother Marc and even her daughter who judges her mother so harshly. But the overall hopeful tone of the book shines through at key points and rewards the reader who sticks with the entire nook.

Bittersweet reality is woven throughout this piece of fiction. Intelligently portrays a potential future time with controversy in politics, religion, and ethics. It felt as though Butler foresaw the future of US leadership and 2-edged promises. Left me with much to ponder in comparison to current situations and where we as a species are headed.

As a born again Christian who voted for Donald Trump I found this book to be frighteningly relavent..And highly possible to become reality, I will pray that it will not come to pass. .But should it I will also pray for there to be many Laurens

I would recommend Octavia's work to any open mind......this book in particular is haunting as it is set in our century, includes a Fascist president and uses the slogan:"Make America Great Again"-all while having been written in 1998. Thought provoking.

Engaging, thought provoking and thoroughly written. At times veers into US politics of identity with the glorification of various minorities. If you don't mind the "preaching" and moralizing angle then this is a very good read.

Well, look, a novel about an America beset by internal woes where a frustrated and economically disenfranchised group of people elect a man who promises to "make America great again" despite little concrete evidence that he can indeed do that. It sure is amazing how quickly Octavia Butler was able to churn out a protest novel for these weird tim-

Oh wait, the novel was published in 1998. And the author passed away in 2006. And while it isn't a direct parallel to the times we live in now (for one, the fictional President in Butler's novel is a hardcore Christian fanatic) you can't help but read it now and experience an eerie sensation when the "make America great again" phrase pops up around page twenty-one. It feels eerily prescient, though the degree to which that unsettles you will probably depend greatly on your personal politics. And not for nothing, I can't imagine Butler, were she still alive, would be pleased to see any portion of her book coming true. While the arc of our current history is as uncertain as always I think we can pretty much guarantee that most of the characters in this novel would trade places with us in a heartbeat. Without giving away too many spoilers, let's just say that there's a reason the novel isn't called "Parable of the Endless Bacchanal".

I will confess that thanks to a slip that is normally not like me, I wound up being about halfway through this volume before realizing its a sequel to "Parable of the Sower", which I had stacked somewhere else. With that said, however, reading the first novel isn't that essential to this plot beyond perhaps introducing the general scenario and some of the major characters. I had no trouble following things and while this book does further the themes of the previous novel its very much its own thing, with its own challenges and conclusions.

As for the general scenario, Butler puts us in a near future America (circa 2030s) where portions of the country seem to have entirely collapsed into poverty and near lawlessness, including rumors of slavery while the man running for President is a Christian fundamentalist that seems to have convinced a good chunk of the populace that not only does Jesus need to take the wheel, but he should be the tires, the engines and the padding in the plush leather seating as well. This would be alarming enough but when you factor in the fanatics of the organization Christian America rampaging over these territories kidnapping families, enslaving them and separating parents from children so the kids can be reeducated along good Christian doctrine you've got the potential answer to the gameshow question "What is a dystopia?"

Fortunately, its not all bad. Our heroine Lauren Olamina has managed with her husband to start a community called Acorn where like minded people of goodwill and can band together and sustain themselves while the country goes to holy heck around them. It also gives Lauren the opportunity to spread the word of her new religion based on the concept of Earthseed, with the underlying idea that God is Change and that our destiny lies amongst the stars. Needless to say, its a tough sell for a lot of people but most of the people at the community believe in it to some extent and despite everything outside the community gradually going downhill with the momentum of a large rock gathering speed things inside Acorn more or less are going rather swimmingly. Lauren and her husband even have a daughter to look forward to.

And then things really get bad.

What struck me most about this book wasn't Lauren and her religion, which seems to boil down to some simplistic poetry that boils down to "use some common sense and don't do stupid things" and her unrelenting conviction that we need to get into space, a conviction that colors pretty much every conversation she has with someone who isn't trying to kill her and would probably carry more weight, or at least differentiate itself from other religions if she could communicate this beyond basically insisting that its true and leaving it at that. On the other hand, her religion doesn't involve finding excuses to marginalize or treat certain groups of people like crap which puts her ahead of ninety percent of the world's religions. Its not even her vision of the future America, which feels more like the articulation of someone's nightmare as opposed to something that could actually happen, especially since every Christian America person we meet is a slaver and a rapist and every religious person that doesn't subscribe to Earthseed is either fanatic to the point of psychosis or blind to the psychosis of everyone else. Its the kind of novel where when someone who is Christian tries to preach to the assembled Earthseed followers, it turns out they're all far more literate in the nuances of the Bible than he is, which gives the proceedings a somewhat self-satisfied air at times despite the gritty surroundings. If you're going to argue in your book that your religion is better, you need to have members of other religions be able to put forward a coherent counter-argument so even if your protagonists do win, it feels like they earned it at least.

No, what works here is how heavily Butler brings across this nightmare vision so that even when it doesn't feel strictly realistic, it feels like its really happening to these people and you hurt along with them. The idea of the a right wind fundamentalist religious group taking over and enslaving people is something a lot of people associate with Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" but what this story has over that one is how purely savage it feels. What Lauren goes through is debilitating and humiliating and demeaning and she relays it all as clearly as she can, pulling no punches are she plots to get out of this hell she finds herself in and tries to figure out how to get her daughter back in a world that doesn't believe she has a right to exist and will go to any lengths to make sure that stays true.

But as fierce as Lauren is and no matter how boldly she tells her story, I don't think the story would gain the power it does if not for the journal entries of her daughter, telling her story years down the line. While her mother's attempts to stay alive can be harrowing and her devotion to the idea of Earthseed somewhat one-note, having her daughter tell her version of events adds some needed shade and perspective to the story that we're already reading, giving us the tale of a person who maybe didn't quite suffer as terribly in a physical fashion but was forced into a world that wanted to bang her into a shape that she didn't quite fit in to. While Lauren's tale encompasses a relatively short period of time, her daughter's gives us the necessary scope to see the full shape and even if the arc veers off out of our sight we can at least do some extrapolation as to where it might be heading.

The contrast between the styles of the journal entries is what keeps the book from becoming too preachy or one-sided (and keeping it out of Sherri Tepper territory, in my opinion) with the fierce honesty of Lauren's sections balanced out by her daughter's attempts to come to grips with her history. It could easily fall prey to cliche but as long as it focuses on these two people's attempts to triumph over a world that seems to have given up on progress of any kind it carries a strength that overcomes the elements I didn't find as compelling. As terrible as the world is in this novel, the real world seems to be doing its best to top the worst her characters can endure every single day. That may be the saddest truth about the novel, in that as awful as the scenarios are anyone who pays attention won't be that surprised at how low the depths are that we can sink to in how we treat each other. And while the idea of a new religion may not hold much water for people who aren't that religious to begin with and the dream that getting off the planet will help solve our problems may strike us as quaint (especially as it seems like if we go into space again it won't be for the thrill of discovery so much as the potential to make lots and lots of money) what rings as true here is the feel of people struggling for what they believe in and refusing to give up, knowing that they may not win and make their own lives better but that the aggregate of their struggle and the struggles of so many others who imagine a better world will reap benefits that they will probably never see. And to persist in something high in risk and not so immediate in reward is maybe a sign of real bravery and courage and perhaps something we could use more of these days, especially to ensure there are more days ahead beyond our field of view.

Trigger warning: Sexual assault

Parable of the Talents somehow manages to be even darker than the first book, Parable of the Sower. Of course, I knew it’d be dark. Octavia Butler’s work is always intense. But even prepared for it, Parable of the Talents was difficult to read in places.

Like it’s predecessor, Parable of the Talents follows Lauren, a young woman driven by her religious revelations of something she calls Earthseed. At the end of Parable of the Sower, Lauren had formed Acorn, a small community based around Earthseed. Six years later, the world is a less chaotic place than it was during Parable of the Sower. Things are still bad, but they’re bad in a different way. Mobs of arsonists and looters are no longer the main threat to Acorn. The danger is instead in growing religious intolerance and the rise of a far right Christian group, Christian America, that wants to make “America great again.” And by “great,” they mean their type of Christianity.

“Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring an feathering, and the destruction of ‘heathen houses of devil-worship,’ he has a simple answer: ‘Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.”

In the growing climate of intolerance, Acorn is a target. Lauren and her community may face more danger than ever before.

After the election, I started hearing that Octavia Butler had written a book that felt eerily similar to America’s current events. At first I thought that it was Parable of the Sower they were referring to. Turns out it’s Parable of the Talents. Fanning the flame of intolerance is Jarret, a presidential candidate who’s supporters attack non-Christian groups. The populism, anger, violence and bigotry that Octavia Butler presents in her version of American during the 2030’s does have some similarities to the current day. This only makes her message more powerful. A good dystopia should act as a warning of what our society can become and encourages readers to change the course before its to late.

“Jarret’s supporters are more than a little seduced by Jarret’s talk of making America great again. He seems to be unhappy with certain other countries.”

I already mentioned that Parable of the Talents is a very difficult book to read. Among other things, it involves slavery, rape, violence, sexism, and homophobia. Probably the worst moment for me involved a f/f couple being tortured by the aforementioned Christian America. Parable of Talents is a book that will make you heart sick. While the scenarios Butler presents are gruesome, they are also disturbingly plausible.

Parable of the Talents is framed similarly to Parable of the Sower, with the majority of the book being told through Lauren’s diary entries. However, in this book, the entries are bridged by writing by Lauren’s daughter, who is skeptical of Earthseed and her mother’s obsession with it. I thought including the daughter point of view was a good choice, since it provides a larger perspective and keeps the novel from feeling too didactic when it comes to Earthseed. I kept skipping the Earthseed poems. They don’t do anything for me.

This duology is a couple of books that I’m going to remember for a long time to come. They are science fiction classics and rightly so. Octavia Butler is a true master of her craft.

I received an ARC in exchange for a free and honest review.

Written in 1998, this second dystopian novel of the Parable series is eerily prescient of today's times and politics. The issues in author Octavia Butler's world were stated to have their roots in 2015, and are set then into the future. The techniques of the new US president of this novel and his catch-phrase "Make America Great Again" make one want to check the original copyright date or confirm the author's 2006 death. The evils done in the name of "Christian America" will make you cringe. If I had I read this novel in 1998, I would have given it a 3.5, and I would have not found it believable. Reading it now is frightening, thoughtful, and, unfortunately believable; for that it deserves a 4.5+.

I have not read dystopian science fiction in some time. I chose to read Parable of the Sower because the reviews had been interesting, and because I thoroughly enjoyed reading Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood and considered her style and creativity a refreshing approach to science fiction.

I should first mention that the author, Octavia Butler, is the only Black female Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science-fiction writer that I know of. That perhaps accounts for her unconventional approach to an already unconventional genre where so many themes are frequently recycled. In her works, Octavia often uses women of color as her lead characters, and plays with gender identity in refreshing ways. In Lilith’s Brood, she created an alien race where there were three genders, with just as elaborate mating processes and hormonal changes taking place among them. I remember thinking, as I was reading, that sci-fi should be this mind-bending.

Parable of the Sower explores race and gender also, but is quite different from LB. It presents us with a future America that has descended into a libertarian dystopia. It has all the features that anarcho-capitalists idealize, including private armies and privatized water, all presented in their worst possible expression against a background of Somalia-like lack of rule of law. In the absence of normal tax collection by states, basic services, like policing, are for profit and provided by gangs of thugs just as evil and corrupt as street gangs.

The anarchy, chaos, pillaging, and violence are made worse by zombie-like gangs of arsonists who are addicted to a drug that makes fire exciting, and who decide to burn up all signs of civilized life. Octavia also conjures up images of cannibalism, of human maggots descending upon the recently dead to steal their goods, and explores issues of wage slavery by presenting a labor dystopia where companies are unregulated and reinstitute slavery, initially under the pretext of debt re-payment.

In the midst of all this, the author feels that her heroes need hope, that they need to believe in something. Anything. So she invents a religion for her heroes–Earthseed–complete with prophecy according to which their destiny is to take root among the stars. “God is change”, her prophet-heroine says, and she redefines God into oblivion and irrelevance as most New-Age prophets do. Perhaps change can be taken for what it is: merely change, without deification? These and other philosophical issues are explored in the novel through dialogue.

Although she describes, via the narrative, the end results of anarcho-capitalism, the novel is not preachy or political, nor does it intend to be. It is meant to be entertainment, and at that it succeeds .The novel’s plot is engaging, with the balance tipping more towards the pessimistic than the optimistic extreme.

Having said that, sometimes I feel that science fiction authors have a unique power to speak to future generations, to give them a warning, and to engage them with moral and philosophical questions that the current generation has not yet had to seriously ask itself. Parable of the Sower is set in the middle of the 21st Century. The curious thing about Butler’s prophetic work is that today, Nestle’s CEO has already declared war on public ownership of all water and said that access to water is not a human right, so that the possibility of water becoming a source of international conflict on par with oil is becoming more of a reality that we will all have to face very soon in this century.

Octavia Butler is no longer with us. She passed away, but has many devoted fans of her fiction and the webpage Octavia’s Brood is dedicated to her literary legacy and to the promotion of the fantasy and science fiction genres among authors of color.

This book is very much Octavia Butler's response to conservative fanaticism and where she thought it would/could lead the United States. She follows through the social changes proposed by Christian conservatives through to its conclusion and creates the dystopian world that their ideology would naturally lead to. Many people have commented on the horrific violence in this story - and it is at times oppressive and overwhelming. Violence is a real fact of life for many people throughout the world, and were Butler's dystopian future to come to pass, the violence in her tale wouldn't begin to tell the tale. It is not senseless violence added for a vicarious thrill or as one reviewer here termed it "torture porn," rather it is always employed in service of the story. Given the nature of the violence and the story, the description could easily be more graphic and personal - Violence is always reported through Olamina's journals, and it takes on a news report kind of tone - Butler does not burden the reader with intimate personal accounts that would haunt the corners of your brain. There is little in the way of uplift in this tale - nor should you expect any in a truly dystopian novel.

In the truest sense of hard-core old-fashioned science fiction, Butler's tale is a warning - it is speculative fiction. Butler speculates what would happen if the division of church and state were dissolved and corporate greed given a free hand. The tale is told in several voices, which separates it from "Parable of the Sower." While Lauren Olamina's voice dominates, the switch to her Daughter's voice who disapproves of her Mother, and her crusade levels off and balances the extremes of liberal self-righteousness that could have easily neutralized the validity of this novel.

"Parable of the Talents" is much better than its predecessor and is written so seamlessly, that you would not have to read "Parable of the Sower" to understand it. Butler has a better grasp of her characters and surer sense of where she's heading in this offering. The book matures significantly and reaches a sustained level of superb writing mid-way that lasts till the end of the novel.

I'm saddened that Octavia Butler passed away before her time and before completing this saga. She was a visionary author with the chops to shatter the glass ceiling of the white-male dominated world of science fiction and show everyone how it's done.

"All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
Is Change.

God
Is Change."

This book is somewhat prophetic. Although written many years before the rise of the alt right, Butler captures the xenophobia and religious fervor taking place in our country today. The character Butler creates to serve as leader of the United States frequently uses phrases like "Make America Great Again". President Trump meet President Jarrett.

This is an apocalyptic tale, an explores particularly the role religion plays when everything is turned upside down and all the old social norms are inoperative. Of course the most common way of thinking about that is the rigid fundamentalist structures that become abusive of the masses to the benefit of the few and seem to have a special attraction for authoritarian and sadistic personalities who abuse the power they acquire within these institutions. There is plenty of evidence of that scenario here. But the main focus is on the development out of crisis of a vision that will sustain a new religion, one that places the highest value on the survival of the life forms that have come into being in this particular time and place and locate that within the entire universe. This is the God who is Change, the God that is the very stuff of the stars. The destiny of humanity cannot be limited to the destiny of the earth. This is not a technological solution for Butler, but a religious one.

Olamina's daughter recounts the troubles faced by Earthseed as it establishes its first community and attempts to begin its journey to the stars. Parable of the Talents feels like the middle book it as meant to be. It's more of the same as Parable of the Sower, but even grimmer, with dystopia-building which grows especially preachy and redundant but, in moments, functions as an apt warning. The narrative structure provides adequate momentum and an interesting external view of the protagonist--but not enough happens, and Earthseed itself doesn't develop significantly until the tail end of the book. This is one of Butler's weakest novels: hardly awful, but still a disappointment. I don't recommend it, but I wish we'd had the chance to read its intended sequel.

Parable of the Talents is the continuation of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, where the reader catches up with Lauren Olamina and her group as they settle in to a safe existence. Or so they think. This book delves deeper into the Earthseed religion and its conflict with the future's form of mainstream Christianity. The reader almost doesn’t have to have read the first book to understand what is going on in this one. Events from Parable of the Sower are reviewed, but not to the point that it bogs down pace of the story. Rather than making this an advertisement for the Earthseed religion, Butler uses various points of view on opposing sides of the issue. This allows the reader to choose whether they want to pity, believe or rail against Lauren and the sacrifices she makes to ensure her beliefs spreads. Several portions of the book are difficult to read, mostly involving the brutality of the Christian Crusaders. I saw other reviews where readers were dismayed that the villains in the book were Christians. I found no problem with this. The world Octavia Butler so beautifully sets up is no more different than any other historical time period where power-hungry individuals twist things for their own gain. Treatment of the Earthseed followers parallels that of Protestants, African slaves and Native Americans. While the story comes full circle, the reader is left to ponder the decisions of the main protagonists, all of which added great tension and conflict throughout the novel.

Parable of Talents shares the journals of Taylor Franklin Bankole and his wife Lauren Oya "Olamina" Bankole which their daughter is reading her historical memories and lifestyles of her parents. She is able to see how the economy has changed--Apocalypse-like, inhabitants of this sectioned community has accumulated from a few to nearly 100, and soon Lauren was united with her thought-to-be-dead brother Marcus in the slave-trade, who has no idea who he is. Parable of the Talents also refers to the scripture Matthew 25, the parable of talents Jesus taught.

This story grabbed my interest to continue reading the pages to see how everything is put together as far as the movement Lauren created as a destiny of survival but later got caught into a slavery-collared community. Slavery again in 2027 and Lauren and community members were caught in 2033 while Larkin was a baby...but one to survive has to learn their captors motives, ways, and habits and use this to find a way of escape!