Parable of the Talents

Butler writes a good yarn so I enjoyed spending more time with Lauren Olamina and her cult of Earthseed. But while the first book was fresh and exciting in how it introduced us to the world and its characters, this one fell a bit flat to me. Too much time was spent on struggles of survival, yet I would have preferred to hear more about the psychological and philosophical reasoning on how cults/religions form. Lauren's daughter definitely brought an interesting outside perspective on her mother, the self-proclaimed messiah, but ultimately that came a little too late. Perhaps I just also had a hard time listening to their cult message over and over again, which seemingly follows the laws of nature and change, yet still chooses the language of theistic religions (‘god'). And obviously their ‘destiny' being the stars elicits some eyerolls nowadays.