Parable of the Talents

Book Rating: 4.0 of 5

Octavia E. Butler remains one of my favorite authors, so this review is likely slightly biased.

Parable of the Talents is the sequel to Parable of the Sower.
I read Talents over the course of about a month. The book started slowly but the story became more engaging about 20% into the book. At first I was concerned I wasn’t going to enjoy the book but once it picked up the story was a very enjoyable read.

Both Sower and Talents can be read indepentently of each other but I would say Talents is best enjoyed after Sower. One issue I had is a read Sower probably two years ago and I had forgotten some of the characters that are referenced from Sower during Talents.

Talents has some good literature effects in it as the story is told both by the main characters estranged daughter and through the main characters journal. The point of views are different and that makes for a more engaging story.

Its hard for me to summarize Talents. The book is complex and has a lot of depth. Its mostly a vision for a dystopian future and how we get their and how we can pull our way out of it. A lot of the book is about the short comings of traditional Christianity for dealing the purpose of humanity and how we can imagine something different. Through the difficult life of Lauren Olamina the cult leader of the “earthseed” we learn about this. Issues of mother and daughter, religion, sexuality and race are all tackled in the book. Its pretty engrossing and I think the book can appeal to people who are not actually that interested in ScyFy.

When I read Sower if felt the book had a really strong impact on me - it seemed so possible. Talents does not feel as strongly real. As a ScyFy novel talents isn’t as strong a possible vision for the future. For example I felt like the like the slave collars and maggots were a bit of a stretch. Its not bad, I just didn’t find it as possible.

In the end Talents is a worthy sequel to Sower and I recommend it. Sadly Octavia Butler passed. I think there was probably space for one more Earthseed book, but we’ll never read it.