I’ve finished Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, finally. It took me a bit because it is so fucking bleak. It describes a near-future United States that has fallen apart and abandoned almost any rule of law. People are fighting for survival. Butler has no pity for her readers and describes a future dark age in harsh detail. What makes it especially bleak for me is that it’s not a post-apocalyptic world. As far as I can tell, nothing concrete had happened to push the world (of the United States) into this situation. It seemed to have slid into it, which strikes me as much more realistic. As I described in
#16 about picking it up, I’ve predominantly read it as a description of a post-Trump U.S. That might have made it a little too real for me. I’m quite sure I will never read it again.
Having said that, there’s also a lot of beauty in it to counter the description of the world. That beauty comes from the main protagonist, slowly developing her own faith-system. It features a lot of the aspects I love about spirituality.
So, with all that said, I’d recommend reading Parable of the Sower, even if it’s hard to read. It’s a very helpful what-if scenario, which never gives up hope.
I bought the second book in the series, already.