Image from Goodreads

[10] Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
Fiction / Science Fiction, saw part II in Kindle Unlimited last year/enjoyed Kindred

Trigger Warnings: Violence, torture

Synopsis: In dystopian (gah, I hope?) 2025, Lauren Olamina is fifteen and lives in a walled-off neighborhood on the outskirts of LA. Going outside the wall means risking your life to people who kill to take what they have, and people who kill because they’re on drugs and burning people alive brings them pleasure. The families within the wall work together to grow food, teach each other, and do a neighborhood watch, but Lauren knows living behind a wall is not sustainable and she’ll be forced to leave one day.

Review: I really don’t want to spoil the book, so I didn’t put a lot in my synopsis. This book is written journal entry style, with dialogue recounting events, and it’s definitely a plot driven novel.  I thought it was going to be sci fi (I wanted sci fi), and there is some mention of a Mars mission at the beginning… but that’s it. Sci fi doesn’t always means space, but I would label the book dystopian, not sci fi. All that being said, the book keep me engaged, BUT the focus of it is on Lauren developing her own religion, which does not interest me at all. Each chapter starts with a verse from her developed religion, and there is a bit of discussion of it, and meh, I just. don’t. care. The plot was interesting enough to make me want to read book II to see what happens next though.

It’s nuts this book was published in 1993 and its imagination of the future is eerily accurate in some parts, even more in book II when they mention a president running under a “make American great again” campaign. Um… whut.

Recommend? Kinda?

[11] Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
Fiction / Science Fiction, part II of the series

DON’T READ IF YOU DON’T WANT PART 1 SPOILED! Skip to my book 12 review below.

Trigger Warnings: violence, torture, eerily too close to current day politics, child kidnapping

Synopsis: Lauren and her husband have founded Acorn, a small community of people who follow Lauren’s religion and support and teach one another. The new president and his Christian Crusaders are hell bent on “fixing” people from “cults” like Lauren’s though, and break in and kidnap her daughter and all the children, and enslave the adults to teach them to be Christians.

Review: This book is told journal style entry as well, only now we have Lauren, her husband, and their daughter telling the story. It’s interesting, but again, heavy on theology and the foundation of Lauren’s new religion. So kind of meh for me. And there are some really hard parts to read with torture when Acorn is overtaken, so trigger warning for that. Lauren’s survival story is interesting, and I love Butler’s writing, but this book was just not for me.

Recommend: If you are in to theology, yes. Otherwise… meh?

[12] The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
Fiction / Science Fiction / Space Opera, Saw in BookBub and had good ratings

Synopsis: The multi-species Wayfarer crew gets the opportunity of the lifetime to tunnel a wormhole to the previously inaccessible core, but along with the typical risks of space travel, there is the uncertainty of whether they should be tunneling a route to an extremely hostile planet and species at all.

Review: Finally, the kind of sci fi I wanted – space travel with multiple species and futuristic ideas that isn’t too overwhelming or hard to keep track of. I’d label this light-hearted sci fi, and I loved it. The online synopsis bills the book as being about one new crew member – Rosemary Harper – and implies most of the book is about her escaping her past, but that’s actually not the case. The book focuses all all of the crew, and does a fantastic job developing them, and explaining the intricacies between species, while not getting too character-driven and still having a forward moving plot as they make their way to the core. There are three more books in this universe and I look forward to reading them.

Recommend? Yes!