Lilith's Brood

This series was something of a disappointment. I had expected better from Octavia Butler. The first book starts out with only remnants of humanity, kept captive by aliens. While this sounds like a great place to start a story about the strengths of humanity recovering from a terrible setback, that's not the story we're told. Instead, the aliens completely dominate the remaining humans, strip them of their humanity, and turn them into sterile, drug dependent, genetic experiment monsters. Mankind is dead - we're just waiting for the creatures that used to be human beings, to die off - because no new human beings can be born after the aliens sterilize the survivors. She tries to end the trilogy with hope, by restoring fertility to a few humans on Mars. However, none of them are truly human anymore since all of them have been genetically altered, and injected with alien cells.

In my opinion, the story relied too heavily on the unbelievable alien powers of control by pheromones. How are we supposed to believe that simply breathing in the presence of these aliens, removes free will and logical thinking? She tries to tell us that the biological urges and bonding of mates overpowers all logical thought and physically injures them on separation, including death when their mates die.

Clearly, Octavia had an agenda to writing this story. Masculine characteristics are constantly denigrated - there are no strong male role models. Independent thought is depicted as a horrible thing. Everyone must obey the consensus decision.