Imago

Short review: I have been working through all of Butler's fiction. This was the next to the last book. Butler is a good writer and I am always intrigued by the questions she raises in her writing. But I am also always disturbed by the conflict. Sex is often not fully consensual (this series is really about a forced breeding of humans and aliens, so that is not surprising). There are always power dynamics at play. In this series humans cannot continue to live without aliens, but if they are with aliens, they are mated in groups and forced to breed. They are given a type of love and dependency for their alien mates, but they still always know they are not really free.

It is meant to be disturbing and it is. The series is incomplete. There was a planned fourth novel but it was not written before Butler passed away.

At the end of the series, I am not sure I would really recommend any of it. It isn't that she is not a good writer (she is a great writer). And it isn't that she doesn't raise interesting issues (she does). But this just isn't the top of her game and the incompleteness of the series combined with the subject matter mean that this is part of her lesser work. There are just better books by Butler, so unless you are trying to read all of her books, I would read the better books first.

My full post on Imago is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/imago/