A 1995 MacArthur Award winner, Butler transcended the science fiction category even as she was awarded that community's top prizes, the Nebula and Hugo Awards. Butler (1947-2006) is recognized as among the bravest and smartest of contemporary fiction writers. How can you go wrong with a novel about a black vampire that has the line: 'Do you love me, Shori, or do I just taste good?'” – Junot Diaz, The Guardian, Books of the Year (2005)Ī writer who darkly imagined the future we have destined for ourselves in book after book, and also one who has shown us the way toward improving on that dismal fate, Octavia E. A harrowing meditation on dominance, sex, addiction, miscegenation and race that completely devours the genre which gave rise to it. “Octavia Butler's deeply disturbing novel, Fledgling, about a 10-year-old girl vampire's struggle to survive is my book of the year. Dare I say that Butler's emotionally and intellectually engaging story about a war between vampire clans carries the reader along with that same sense of being in good hands? I only wish she herself had been longer lived.” – Alan Cheuse, NPR, All Things Considered Bitten, is how the narrator herself might put it. “.within a few chapters, we're utterly seduced by the forward motion of the narrative. Gripping and memorable, Butler's latest is a welcome return performance.” – Booklist (Starred Review) “Renowned sf author Butler's first novel since Parable of the Talents (1998) delves deeply into the world of vampires… Butler has a reputation as a master for good reason, and her narrative flows quickly and seamlessly along as Shori seeks those who would destroy her. Fledgling is a captivating novel that tests the limits of otherness and questions what it means to be truly human.įeaturing a new introduction by Nisi Shawl.

Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted-and still wants-to destroy her and those she cares for, and how she can save herself. Fledgling, Octavia Butler's last novel, is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly un-human needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: she is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire.

Fledgling butler novel