yong : book 1/x : Fledgling by Octavia Butler

(yes, same book as ewee) It's been so long I damn near forgot how to read. But I finally stepped into our new library today, finally used the ol' library card again, and finally cracked open a new book. And though I'd been thinking Butler had shot her wad, used her best stuff on the Parable books and never really found the same inspiration in her other novels, I was delighted to have this her last novel prove me wrong.

It boggles the mind that someone can take a road so often tread as the vampire genre and turn it into something so new, so completely not at all vampire, so intensely more human. And it's a relief that Butler actually toned down some of her previous over-focus on the truly dark, despicable aspects of human misbehavior, things that even with their artistic merit in her previous works also had the unavoidable--whether intentional or no--stink of sheer shock value. In taking vampire lore and making it...you know how some good sci-fi is almost anti-sci-fi? This is anti-vampire. You know how taking a color picture and turning it black and white or sepia or using some other filter, while removing or distorting some colors, somehow serves to better bring out, focus, illuminate other parts of a picture? So does this book do some powerful light-shining on...I won't list 'em for fear of spoilering, but certain significant of the things that make us human, and our internal struggles to make ourselves mo' better human.

And it ain't even so heavy a read that I couldn't enjoyably blow through it in an afternoon-cum-evening as a weary-head-emptying diversion. Good read. And a long time coming.