Parable of the Talents

Rating:
Summary: I loved this book. Butler gives hope in a dark time.
Review: Consistent with her other novels, Octavia Butler creates characters that you trust, understand, and love; characters who are up against substantial odds. Her vision of a dark future void of the securities that we all take for granted is a stark example of "divided we fall."

Perhaps not all readers will be as enamored, as I am, with the truths and promises of the Earthseed Destiny but I think all can appreciate Butler's prediction of human misery when tolerance and democratic rights are trampled.

Religion is a balm, an inspiration, a scourge, and a trap but it is a fundamentally human creation, sprung from our abstract vision. Butler explores our need to formalize these abstractions. When she redefines "God" in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents she tries to avoid the pitfalls that are inevitable where religion is concerned.

Butler provides many dissenting views of her protagonist, Olamina. Allowing your faith in the character to be tested. Olamina is not perfect but her recognition of the power of a belief system and her refusal to transform the core truths into something comforting or theistic makes her a trustworthy prophet.

Read this novel and you will draw many conclusions about the state of the world today.

Rating:
Summary: Using one's talents
Review: Continuing from "Parable of the Sower", this book finds Lauren and her followers in Earthseed as they struggle to make their small community thrive in the time of chaos in what's left of the United States of America. Actually, this is all told through the eyes of Lauren's daughter Asha, who, through her mother's journals and teachings, tries to understand the mother she hardly knew. A religious zealot became President of the country, and Lauren's community was destroyed for its heathen views and all the children were placed with other families, so Asha grew up never knowing her mother. Asha weaves together her own story with that of Lauren's struggles to rebuild her Earthseed community, and she tells of how she finally met her birth mother with the unwitting assistance of Lauren's estranged gay brother. The first half of the book is a bleak report of the atrocities done by men to women and by zealous humans in the name of religious beliefs. It nearly overwhelms the story and detracts from what Butler is presenting, but eventually this improves and it becomes the compelling story that it ought to be, although overall it's not as potent as "Parable of the Sower". Like the first book (and books by Margaret Atwood, Sally Miller Gearhart, and Marge Piercy), Butler expresses a fascinating feminist view of the political, social, and personal turmoil our country faces, and the potential path that could be taken.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating!
Review: I love this book. It shows all of human nature: the good, the bad, the chaos, the order-- and how one community can survive anything together. "Parable of the Talents," teaches a new religion called Earthseed. Lauren Olamina, the main character, preaches Earthseed, always saying GOD IS CHANGE. I'm not very religious, but i can relate to all of the verses. Most of them are very true verses, ones that i can relate to. This book is about the world after the Apocalypse. Slave collars are used to control people, sending them lashes mechanically. A provocative but fascinating book-- and long enough to enjoy all of its layers.
"Parable of the Talents" is a Science Fiction book-- but not the stereotypical robots and Martians kind of a book. It mostly feels like your reading about history-- even though there are some inventions our society doesn't have. Recommended highly from a person who hasn't liked reading much-- especially science fiction- until this book!

Rating:
Summary: Thought Provoking
Review: I read Parable of the Sower and I felt overwhelmed with thought and visions of the future and I didn't want it to end. I was so happy to follow up with Parable of the Talents. Wonderful book. Octavia Butler does an excellent job at forcing us to view our patterns and choices and the way we are currently dealing with human and social conditions. I strongly recommend this book to everyone but especially if you are looking for a read that will feed your mind and stimulate you intellectually.....

One complaint since the main character Lauren was creating a new way of thinking via Earthseed at times I felt as if I were reading one of those "power for living type books" and it got to be a bit much at times.... Enjoy

Rating:
Summary: Acorn Head Woman
Review: Not necessarily a better read than Parable of the Sower, but more cleverly crafted. Interspliced with Olamina's journal entries is input from her adult daughter which adds a perspective not available in the first book.

To me Parable of the Sower had a greater feeling of urgency. Wondering how Olamina would survive propelled me through the pages. Parable of the Talents feels slower and more repetitive. I lost count of how many characters were raped or molested. The majority of characters feel so flat and insignificant, it's hard to be concerned when tragedy finally catches up with them. But I don't think that hurts the novel. At heart it's an examination of what could happen after an economic collapse, how different classes struggle to maintain what they have, and how opportunists try to take even more for themselves. More importantly it looks at how religion can become a trap for the desperate or a tool for setting them free.

While individual characters feel flat, the society Butler shows us feels very real. Clearly she's a well educated author, alert to the trends in modern politics and where they might be leading us. If you have any interest in anthropology, sociology, or politics you'll enjoy Parable of the Talents.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but not one of her best
Review: One of those rare sequels that is better than the original (which itself was amazingly good), Butler continues the story of Lauren Olamina and her attempts to establish Acorn, a self-sufficient community in a nightmarishly dystopian world. Many of the elements of the previous novel are here--Lauren's genetic ability to feel the actual pain of others' experiences, the collapse of the U. S. government and its economy--but there is much new. Alaska has seceded from the nation, the U.S. is a war with Canada, and religious fundamentalists threaten what remains of the American way of life.

The sequel is told from three points of view. While much of the conflict is between Lauren and the brother she frees from slavery, Lauren's daughter provides a retrospective and balanced look at the eventual and inevitable hostility between the two siblings. The first half of the book portrays Acorn and its attempts to bloom in a hostile world. When the community comes under attack from the newly elected fundamentalist government that promises to restore law and order, the novel recalls--in a good way--Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale," especially in the portrayal of the hypocrisy of those in power and their attitude toward women. Part social commentary, part adventure story, the second half of the novel concerns Lauren's often desperate search for her daughter and her persistent desire to reestablish Earthseed, the religious system she has created which believes that humankind's ultimate destiny is to establish itself on other planets.

As usual, Butler is best when depicting intra- and interpersonal conflicts and when detailing the unusual specifics of her imagined world. But, because the novel is such a smorgasbord of themes and because she describes the rise, demise, and resurrection of a community of several dozen people, only the lead characters are meticulously sketched. Unlike her other books, the novel falters occasionally in its attempt to render the many characters, who are often difficult to distinguish.

Ultimately, Butler is kind to her readers: she doesn't leave the novel with an wide-open ending designed to generate sequels. But there's good news for those of us who enjoyed the first two books: in an interview at the end of the book she admits that she "intends to write about communities of Earthseed who, in fulfillment of the Destiny, go out to extrasolar worlds."

Rating:
Summary: A book worth teaching . . .
Review: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents are the best written of Butler's books. Stylistically, she just keeps improving as a writer. I understand sci-fi fans might want more science, but thse books are really morality tales about the path she sees our country taking--- and it's not for the faint of heart. Be forewarned, a point in the middle is so depressing I could barely keep reading, and I find the end heartbreaking despite the utopian possibilities offered by the end of Lauren's story. This book is most extraordinary because she frames Lauren's writing with her daughter's observations of her life, and readers are forced to interrogate Lauren's kind of new age spiritual politics with her daughter's embittered, ambivalence to religion and politics. Butler is always interested in how and how much people resist power, and in examining how people survive by doing things that no one would have imagined as a productive possibilities before. This book is worth teaching, as you can explore contemporary political conflict but also think about the allegory of resistance Butler presents here--- something revolutionary as opposed to something that accomodates old systems. I can't wait for the next one.

Rating:
Summary: 4 and a half stars-ingenous!
Review: the only problem that I had with this book is that it started slow. I guess i was still working with the speed that the previous entry, "parable of the sower" had left off at. All and all, it is beautiful.


As with the last book, I was impressed with Butler's detail(the religon that Lauren created, the city that was built, the characters' beliefs). There was no disconnect between me and the characters that I was reading about, or the story. The struggle that lauren had endured to keep close to her faith was real. I rose and fell with her triumphs and loses.

A promising writer must put this selection in their studies.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: The Parable of the Talents is the story of a woman attempting to maintain stability in a world of anarchy. I found it to be at first intriguing and promising, then it became absolutely unbearable, and then refreshing, surprising, and enlightening. Although Butler is a powerful storyteller, she lacks in several areas and this novel is significantly flawed.

My problem with Parable of the Talents wholeheartedly began and remained with the people of Acorn, and with Acorn itself. There were way too many characters and families that Butler threw in the story purely for exemplification-they offered absolutely nothing else. Instead of trying to unsuccessfully weave all of these characters into the story, it would have been better to read into a few more well developed characters, leaving the majority of the group nameless. I've noticed that Butler does this in her other work as well and can't understand why. The characters are neither allegorical nor satirical, just a jumble of names and brief physical descriptions that add absolutely nothing to the story.

The very long-winded narrative of the Acorn's daily activities served no other purpose than to show Acorn's philosophy and way of life, which could have been done in a few chapters. The endless chapters narrating the Acorn lifestyle certainly didn't broaden or flesh out any of the other characters, including Olamina. In addition, the never-ending focus on the doctrines of Earthseed for the first 200 hundred or so pages became very preachy and didatic. The excessive lyrics from 'Earthseed' were completely uneccessary. Butler even admits in her afterword that she had to keep "rewriting the first 150 pages or so of Talents and heading up one blind alley or another...I couldn't seem to tell Olamina's story no matter how hard I tried."

Olamina's need to always improve and change was an interesting one and was well manifested in her creation of Earthseed, but it her motives in general were never explained. It was obvious that she wanted to create a progressive group of people who were realistic about 'religion' and had a logical explanation for the ins and outs of life, which is and was appealing, but I kept searching for another reason for Olamina's obsession with her own controlling strength and independence, and never found one. After reading Octavia Butler's afterword, it became obvious to me that Olamina, Acorn, and Earthseed represented Octavia Butler's own values and motivations, which offered me a bit more insight into the character of Olamina. It would be interesting to research exactly how much of Butler's own personality is reflected in her female protagonists and other leading characters.

Despite my griping, I am still impressed with Octavia Butler's mastery of illustrating the follies of human nature and what it breeds. I somewhat enjoyed Bloodchild and the Lilith's Brood series, but I feel Butler has definitely faltered this one. Although this series doesn't have to be read in sequence, I would recommend that those new to Octavia Butler start with Bloodchild, which is a collection of short stories, Lilith's Brood, and then Parable of the Sower and Talents.

Rating:
Summary: prophecy
Review: This book may be prophetic. It is the scarriest version of world social decay because I can see her trail to it. It should be required reading in all High Schools, so we never let it happen.