Rating: 
Summary: A missing link revealed
Review: If you've read her excellent _Mind of My Mind_ and _Patternmaster_, you might wonder about how the world changed so much between these two novels and what exactly these Clayarks are. Well, this book clarifies much of this. While it's probably a notch below the other two in the series, it's well worth reading and essential if you want a complete understanding of the Patternmaster series
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic!
Review: Octavia Butler is the most talented SF writer I've ever come across and Clay's Ark is a fantastic piece of fantasy work that will consume you with terror and dare you to put it down. I never thought of myself as a SF-buff but what Butler writes can't be boxed into just that one genre. She's great!
Rating: 
Summary: OK but not Butler's best
Review: Other things I've read by Octavia have been solid and brilliant. A bit of a disappointment, this book didn't quite stand on its own for me... I haven't read the others in the series. Very little exposition of the background leading to the central dilemma... "Clay's Ark" gets only a few paragraphs. Character development is strong, plot is weak. A family is captured and tries to escape. A lot of ideas are examined, but nothing seems to come of it...
Rating:
Summary: again, a slow start
Review: Perhaps Butler must establish a concept before she really gets going with it in sequels. It is another mark of the great depth of her imaginative powers, which surpass any scifi writer that I know. I did not get into the characters of the Clayarks as much as her other characters. This novel seemed more labored than her other efforts, thinner, much as Dawn inaugurated her mutagensis series. It is only later that the true depth and elegance of her vision comes out.
Rating:
Summary: again, a slow start
Review: Perhaps Butler must establish a concept before she really gets going with it in sequels. It is another mark of the great depth of her imaginative powers, which surpass any scifi writer that I know. I did not get into the characters of the Clayarks as much as her other characters. This novel seemed more labored than her other efforts, thinner, much as Dawn inaugurated her mutagensis series. It is only later that the true depth and elegance of her vision comes out.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic!
Review: Read the book! Gets your mind focus on the future and what it can hold! Also read Kindrad!
Rating:
Summary: Must read, overwhelmingly futurealistic!
Review: Read the book! Gets your mind focus on the future and what it can hold! Also read Kindrad!
Rating:
Summary: Change happens
Review: The last novel in her Patternist series to be published, it shares a lot more in common with her Xenogenesis trilogy in tone and subject material. Of the Patternist novels that I have read, that group seems more oriented towards questions of power and dominance--basically, who is stronger, and what are the responsibilities of that role. The series actually begins with Wild Seed, which explains the character of Doro, who then sees a success in his human breeding program in Mind of My Mind. Clay's Ark is next in the timeline, but it only refers obliquely to the existence of a psionic pattern (late in the novel, it explains the macguffin for the faster than light drive used by the spaceship that returns to Earth), but it mainly concerns the alien organism that creates the Clayarks. The next book, Patternmaster, shows these two groups--the Patternists and the Clayarks--millennia later, both almost unrecognizable as human. It is this evolution away from humanity that becomes the main theme of Xenogenesis, but it is in the forefront of Clay's Ark. The difference, however, is that this evolution is almost entirely negative here, whereas in Xenogenesis there's an ambiguity to it that makes it much more complex than just a good/bad issue. Change happens (to quote Butler's more recent work). Why is it negative here in Clay's Ark? Because of the mindlessness of the extraterrestrial interaction. As humans, thinking and feeling humans, we see ourselves as ratiocentric--that is, we value the power of logic and rational thought and discount the so-called "animal" urges of instinct and biological compulsion. This dichotomy makes up the conflict between the two groups in Patternmaster: the Patternists are pure thought, ruled by the power of the mind, whereas the Clayarks are all biological urges, roaming free, living life in the here and now. The human race has bifurcated, and although a "mute" semblance remains, humans are portrayed as beings where both mind and body are weak and dull. In Xenogenesis, Butler changes this, and the organism that is entirely mutable is portrayed as the strongest. Because it contains a lot of adventure--there's kidnapping and close escapes and gunfire and more violence than a Fox Saturday night-- Clay's Ark hides a lot of this underlying thought. Only the struggle that Eli continues to endure breaks this action-orientation; the rest of the characters are driven either by the disease or their human nature to respond to the events. While not as hopeful or thoughtful as her later work, I liked this one tremendously.
Rating:
Summary: Deeply engrossing
Review: This book commanded me to read it in one sitting. This is something few novels can do given my relatively short attention span. This book falls under the "What happens when ET microbes come to earth" category. Hint - we usually die. If you like this book, try Blood Music by Greg Bear.
Rating:
Summary: too much soap opera
Review: This book of the Patternist series is a bit like watching a soap opera. Remove the alien and you'd pretty much have the same story for a variety of motivations -- disease, social outcasts, etc. Once more we are almost overwhelmed by the number of characters and not given quite enough background or insight into developing a strong sense of empathy with any character.
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