SPOILER ALERT
Second book in the Earthseed series, which only managed to be 2 books in the end. Butler had planned on doing more, but she ended up moving on to other things. That's not really so bad, since the second book does not end with lots of cliffhangers or loose ends. It wraps up pretty well.
So, to my impressions of the book. I decided to warn about spoilers because I can't think of a way to review without giving away plot points that the reader should find out from reading it. That said, these things stand out to me. The first one is just a pet peeve I have to get out of the way.
Although I really like this book, as well as the first one, Parable of the Sower, this book has a couple of what I can only call mistakes. There is one instance where the author seems to forget how many children a character has. We're told he has four, but later only three are with him. I reread the parts between and there was nothing about him losing a kid in any way. The only thing I could conclude was that Butler forgot. Another example is when a community is attacked by religious fanatics and the people either killed in the fighting or enslaved. Originally, seven people were unaccounted for. Much later in the book, the main character mentions three people who might have gotten away. She seems to have totally forgotten the other four. These might seem nit-picky, but things like that burst the imaginary bubble you need to put yourself in when you read fiction.
Those pet peeves out of the way, I really found the book fascinating to read, although not in an entirely enjoyable way. It's hard to call a story enjoyable that is about the USA becoming a miserable hell-scape. This book is even rougher to read than the first one. We learn even more about the state of the country and it actually goes downhill from the situation in the first book, because on top of everything else, the country elects a tyrannical religious fanatic for president.
Speaking of that, there are some eerie similarities to our own time. The president in the book even runs on a platform of Making America Great Again! People vote for him, even though he has problematic views because they want a Strong Leader who can Tell It Like It Is.
It's not hard to imagine our country devolving into the world of the book. We just have to continue the way we are going with destroying the planet, vast income inequality, and letting corporations run everything. There are even "Company Towns" in the book, where a certain company basically "owns" the town and everyone in it. The people are all wage slaves to the company and are not even paid in dollars, but in company scrip, which they redeem for the things they need at a company store. But the pay does not cover their needs, so they end up in debt to the company, which now really owns them, because they cannot leave their jobs until they pay back the debt. At that point they can be literally sold to another company as if they are just company assets. Their children can even be sold away from them. Corporations are completely and utterly amoral and evil. People say now that if a corporation is a person, it's a sociopath. In this book, if these corporations are people, they are Satan.
Interestingly, things seem to be getting somewhat better toward the end of the book. Society is not quite as sick as it had been for the past few decades, but there is not really much of an explanation for why the "Pox" as it was called, seems to be ending. The tyrant president is gone, but he was not the cause of the decline, so I found myself curious as to what was helping society to claw it's way back up slowly. I think Butler could have given better explanations for that, other than it needed to be that way for her story to go in the direction she wanted it to.
Before I'm done, I have to say something about a couple of the characters. Marcus and Larkin/Asha. I really dislike them. It's not hard to see why in the case of Marc. He lied to his niece and told her that her mother was dead, when he knew very well she was alive. He never told his sister that he knew where her daughter was, even though she was actually staying with him! He stole his sister's child. For a holy man, he is pretty evil. Larkin/Asha disappointed me in the way she decided to torture her mother by refusing a relationship with her. Her mind was turned against Lauren and her kind by her adoptive parents and by Marc. But once she had the chance to meet Lauren, she could have started a new relationship with her long lost mother. Unfortunately, she's a weak little wimp and gets scared when Lauren reacts with anger after finding out about Marc's deception. Lauren is a tall imposing woman and we know she is intense, but Larkin runs like a scared little rabbit from her mother's anger, which isn't even directed at her. I know she was raised badly and had a hard time, but she was a grown woman by then, capable of thinking for herself. I also could not see how, after reading her mother's journal entries about how much she missed her baby and loved her and how hard she tried to find her, Larkin could say things like, "My mother loved Earthseed more than she ever loved me." I'm paraphrasing, because I no longer have the book in front of me, but Larkin expressed that sentiment over and over.
To be fair, I'm not saying Butler should have written her differently. People are complicated and relationships get screwed up by situations and personalities all the time. I'm not saying it's unrealistic. It totally is. It's just sad. It would have been interesting to see if Larkin/Asha was going to be in subsequent books and whether her feelings for her mother might have changed. Though it would have been too late anyway, since Lauren was dead by the time Larkin read the journal.
Well, this review went on too long! After all, I do recommend both of these books. Not only is the story fascinating, but it also could be seen as a "don't let this happen to you" for our society.
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