Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler (book review)
Octavia Butler died in 2006 and ‘Fledgling’ was her last novel, originally printed in 2005 and first printed in the UK in 2014 and this edition came out in 2022 with a gorgeous cover even if she has a little less hair in the book.
An amnesic apparently looking like a 11 year-old naked girl wakes up in a cave, discovers she has skin injuries but desperately hungry. She’s also very strong and fast, eating a human and stalking deer to eat its raw flesh to restore herself. When she bumps into Wright Hamilton and drinks his blood she realises she’s a vampire after all that has happened to her. She adopts the name of Renee and investigates the area she came from hoping for clues as to who she was and from where.
Having read Butler’s ‘Last Interviews’ book, it is more apparent here that she writes in large chunks as there is a sudden change once she meets one of her own people, who turns out to be her birth father, and quickly fills in some of her lost memories. No longer Renee but Shori Matthews (although her surname isn’t officially noted until further in the book) and her species, the Ina, are long-lived and she is, in fact, 53 years old and at least 450 years more life to live. Those whom she drinks blood from regularly, called symbionts, double their lifespan. She’s also an experiment to see if dark skin can tolerate sunlight. She still burns but, wrapped up, she can go out and doesn’t necessarily need to sleep during the day. They aren’t that close to the mythological vampires. These two chapters gives a lot to absorb. Someone like me will play with the readers a lot longer and, had she lived, I think I would have asked Butler about this.
Things change again, when Shori discovers her new family have been killed and incinerated, she rescues two of the symbionts who had been away when the attack happened. Returning them to another home they had, this also gets attacked. Fortunately, they get away this time.
Butler builds up layers of character development and how the Ina society works. More so, when three arsonists are captured and interrogated and find one of the other Ina families is involved, despite the denials. A Council of Seven is called and it is explained to Shori what is going to happen when there is a gathering of families and you know things aren’t going to go to plan.
Much of what follows is spoiler. Its not hard to spot racism going on here mixed in with new species variant bias as well. Butler was clever enough to establish various factors and use them in unexpected ways. I’m less sure about Shoni looking child-like even though she is older than most of her acquired symbionts. Not all Ina are tall and a few of the other female Ina aren’t that tall neither, although not as short as her.
The legalities of judging the accused does bring out some surprises but that’s spoiler. The Ina are the source of the vampire myth. Unlike the latter, they are beneficial to their symbionts, even if they have some sort of willing mind control. They breed like humans and, although they can have sex with them, they can’t interbreed. There is a hint that the source species didn’t come from Earth. Had Butler not died, it would have been interesting had she looked more at their lives in future books.
Butler was a very good character writer and it shows here. I think she might have gone over the top with details on secondary characters in the Council presented in first person to Shori. Equally, even though we are told who the conspirators are, its only in the trail the real reasons come out and we have to rely on the Ina’s super-sense of smell to work out who is lying. The problem with first-person stories is you only see one perspective of the events, so you’re less likely to see the villain perspective and we aren’t left in a situation to have totally worked out who was doing it although my guess of the reason wasn’t far off.
As a final novel, Butler did leave an interesting legacy. I think her ‘Patternist’ books featuring the body-swopping Doro the most memorable but this one isn’t that far off.
GF Willmetts
November 2023
(pub: Headline, 2022. 310 page small enlarged paperback. Price; £ 9.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-4722-8109-8)
check out website: www.headline.co.uk
