Rating: 
Summary: Eerie and evocative, but stumbles (spoilers)
Review: "Dawn" is my least favorite Butler book that I have yet read, but it was still well worth reading.Butler is a fine writer, but she sometimes struggles with character development, and her characters in this novel -- that is, the human characters -- are relatively flat and featherweight. She relies on the rather uninspired technique of introducing Lilith's "children" through the reports she reads, and as a result, they never breathe with life. Like a newborn GURPS character, they're all a hollow collection of quirks, neuroses, and skills. Furthermore, the plot of the book stumbles badly with their introduction. The process by which Lilith awakens the humans and starts preparing takes far too long and is rather dry and uninvolving. Butler is clearly interested in the dynamics and conflict in building a community -- she seems to explore this theme in practically every book, always in a similar way -- but there isn't really room for it in "Dawn," a novel whose great strength is the interaction of loneliness and sexuality for a stranger in a strange land. For the aliens -- and Lilith's ever-deepening relationships with them -- are wonderful. Watching her adjust from fear and uneasiness in their presence to erotic (if very conflicted) joy with Nikanj is simply the best thing about the book, and alone makes it worth the read. It is rare for sci-fi writers to challenge sexual norms, particularly in such an odd way, without making a joke out of it. Although she seems barely interested in what is typically considered [different] sexuality, Butler shows an intense ability to depict couplings most people would have great difficulty even imagining.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fine Beginning of a Great Story
Review: "Dawn" is an outstandingly good novel. It drags a bit at first, but stay with it; it gets MUCH better, and the two sequels are even better than "Dawn" Save money by buying all 3 in one volume under the title "Lilith's Brood." See reviews of "Lilith's Brood" for more details. Octavia Butler is one of the very best writers you will ever read! Buy and read ALL her works!
Rating:
Summary: A Fine Beginning of a Great Story
Review: "Dawn" is an outstandingly good novel. It drags a bit at first, but stay with it; it gets MUCH better, and the two sequels are even better than "Dawn" Save money by buying all 3 in one volume under the title "Lilith's Brood." See reviews of "Lilith's Brood" for more details. Octavia Butler is one of the very best writers you will ever read! Buy and read ALL her works!
Rating:
Summary: Read it, get the rest of the series
Review: "Dawn" was my first experience in Science Fiction. I couldn't believe I waited so long! I inhaled all three of the Xenogenesis books and am now reading her short stories, "Blood Child." The biotech stuff really intrigued me, especially since I work at an immunology research laboratory! Cancer and genetic diseases play a very important part in Ms. Butler's work. I find the race issue to be secondary in her work and that her feministic approach to life is much more in the forefront. Either way, of course, being the subjugated being in one's world produces a certain world view - where one sits determines where one stands - something I can definitely relate to! Between the medical, gender, racial, human and moral issues brought out by the wonderful story-telling, there is an enormous amount to think about.
Rating: 
Summary: Stirring, Riveting, Disturbing: A future of darkness & light
Review: Octavia Butler has a way of writing that makes the reader think and feel. From the moment Lilith awakens in unfamiliar surroundings to the final page, there are questions -- disturbing questions.</P>
The old cliche of science-fiction aliens: "oh, you humans are so warlike--you will destroy yourselves" has truly come to pass. The Oankali, a race of tentacled grey things with three genders, come to do what they can to preserve the human race--not in its unadulterated integrity, but by "benevolently assimilating" the human race as part of the Oankali by mating into the alien gene pool. Lilith, most aptly named, is the Oankali's choice of human liaison between the two races. She is charged with the unenviable task of getting the rest of her people to understand that the human race has forfeited their collective right to their homeworld.</P>
Butler's portrayal is finely characterized -- Lilith's fears and obstacles are poignantly detailed. The reader cannot help but feel for her, and fear for her when she must face the ire of her own people who brand her race traitor.</P>
I am less than comfortable with Butler's pervasive theme of "the human race in its current condition is just <I>not good enough</I> to carry the planet into the future all on its own. This diminishes my enjoyment of the book somewhat, but the writing is still indisputably powerful.</P>
Rating:
Summary: Ms. Butler uses her 248 pages exquisitely well...
Review: A short, enthralling, beautifully painless read. The author really knows how to tell her story, which is fascinating and new. Characters and plot are detailed, interesting and realistic. Human and alien characters (the Oankali) alike are very lifelike. The ideas behind the aliens are very fun and interesting : a species that can remix its own DNA, has three sexes and that acts as an interstellar DNA trader. A lot of thought went into creating the Oankali culture and biology. The pace of the book is brisk, details are given in the perfect amount, no overlong, self gratifying (for the author) descriptions... Octavia Butler has a thoroughly enjoyable writing style. I highly reccomend this book to any who cared enough to read these words. :)
Rating:
Summary: A Provocotive, unusual view of what a future may be.
Review: A very thought provoking, well developed view of what an alien dominated future might be like, and a very thorough study of what a human response would be like. A great read that made me think about how I would react in such a situation.
Rating:
Summary: Disturbing and Intriguing
Review: After being assigned this novel for a college class, I picked it up expecting not to like it much; the professor had praised it as being exemplary of 'African-American writing,' a phrase I am as leery of as I am of 'feminist writing' or 'Asian writing' or any writing at all that's judged/labelled on the basis of the author's ethnic background or gender rather than on the merits of the story. However, _Dawn_ was nothing like what I had feared. Its story does not seem aimed particularly at any target audience, instead being simply enjoyable science fiction. There is no preaching in this book--only an engaging plot which draws the reader into its folds, the better to sink tendrils into the mind and make one wonder 'What if...?' I don't know whether I *like* the ideas that Butler presents. They disturbed me. Yet I also found myself intrigued; there is plenty of food for thought in Lilith's relationship to the Oankali, and the Oankali's view of humanity. It's a shame that the general portrayal of humanity is tainted enough to cost the book a star. True, the thought-provoking nature of the novel is in part due to the subtle questions it raises about conformity and the truth of the saying about what to do 'when rape is inevitable'--but with the exception of Lilith, we are given no human protagonists with whom we can strongly identify, through whose eyes we can really explore these issues. The males in particularly are portrayed poorly; for the most part violent, boorish, and sex-obsessed, they aren't what I would call the best representitives of our population. Nor are the woman any better; most of them are either followers or conformists, allowing themselves to be drugged and subjected to sexual activities that they would not consent to of their free will. These people aren't quite my idea of heroes or heroines. All in all, though, this is a novel well-worth reading both for the questions it raises and for the entertaining story it provides. And for those who find themselves drawn in particularly strongly, the sequel, _Adulthood Rites_, will serve to clarify and expand on the ideas found here.
Rating: 
Summary: Largely disappointing
Review: After reading the first nine pages of Dawn by Octavia E. Butler, I anticipated quite a mind-blowing novel. Rarely have I read a group of passage as vivid, startling and absorbing as Ms. Butler's initial description of Lilith Iyapo's nightmarish detainment by mysterious, extraterrestrial captors. Unfortunately the authoress is better at getting a reader's attention than keeping it. As more is revealed about the bizarre Oankali, the alien race confining Lilith, the book becomes consistently less interesting. I give Ms. Butler credit for composing some striking, surrealistic imagery and for creating very believable characters in Lilith and other human detainees whom the Oankali have collected after a devastating nuclear war, but I also must note that she seems unable to effectively steer the story in any stimulating direction (After the second chapter, it just wanders) and that her aliens seem, well.... alien. More time is spent dispensing gabble about sensory arms and suspended animation than any information that makes these placid, stoic creatures seem alarming or compelling. I'm sorry to say that little of subsequent chapters lived-up to the astounding first.
Rating:
Summary: Xenogenesis Series Just Wonderful...All Of It!
Review: Before I selected an omnibus called Xenogenesis from the Sci Fi Book club (containing: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago), I had never heard of Octavia Butler. Am I glad I selected this accidentally when I joined the club (Mainly because it said it had three books in it). While most of the free books I received were average to no good, The Xenogenesis Series was exceptionally great!
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