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    Fledgling
    Fledgling
    Fledgling
    Audiobook12 hours

    Fledgling

    Written by Octavia E. Butler

    Narrated by Adenrele Ojo

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Shori is a mystery. Found alone in the woods, she appears to be a little black girl with traumatic amnesia and near-fatal wounds. But Shori is a fifty-three-year-old vampire with a ravenous hunger for blood, the lost child of an
    ancient species of near-immortals who live in dark symbiosis with humanity. Genetically modified to be able to walk in daylight, Shori now becomes the target of a vast plot to destroy her and her kind. And in the final apocalyptic battle,
    her survival will depend on whether all humans are bigots—or all bigots are human …
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 3, 2020
    ISBN9781980032014
    Fledgling
    Author

    Octavia E. Butler

    Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) was a renowned African American author of several award-winning novels, including Parable of the Sower, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1993, and Parable of the Talents, winner of the Nebula Award for the best science fiction novel in 1995. She received a MacArthur Genius Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work and was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future.

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    Reviews for Fledgling

    4/5

    1,111 ratings95 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Slow to start but once I got about 5 chapters in I couldn’t stop !!!!

      4 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This was really good! I love learning alongside Shuri the in’s and outs of these vampires. The audiobook was also great!

      3 people found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Oof. This one was a rough read despite Octavia Butler’s phenomenal writing. A prepubescent presenting vampire wakes up with massive physical trauma and amnesia (never a great combo). She must figure out who she is and who tried to kill her, all while having wild sex with those she…enthralls, I guess. That makes it slightly less consensual than it is depicted, but as with so much of Octavia’s stories the ideas of race, consent, and loving those who oppress you are on display. I love Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series, but the sexualization of a character presented as a child was something I really could not get past. I’ve searched for interviews of Butler about this book, but have not been able to find anything to get more context of whether this was an exploration of children’s sexuality or a deconstruction and inversion of so many of the fetishaztion of vampires that was so prevalent around when this book was written. If you can get past the kinda-sorta-not-really-but-still-very-much pedophelia there is a fascinating story of vampire culture.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Once you get past the initial shocked you realize that this is quite the masterpiece. Give it a try. I promise you won’t feel like you’re reading Lolita. It’s not that type of book. She might be short and look young but she is an adult and behaves as such even if she looks 11. Don’t let others tell you what to think. Give this is a chance, push past the first few chapters and then form your own opinion. There’s a reason this author is so well acclaimed.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Weird pedophilic stuff going on in here. Couldn't finish it

      2 people found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Could have been an interesting story about these strange creatures except the gut cringing sex acts the main character has. This is why: she looks like an 11year old child and even if she is 35years she apparently is still a child according to her own race. Still she has sex with grown men. As it has no value to the story I don't understand why write it. If she human or not, I don't care. She is a child and her lust don't make it ok for grown men to use that as an excuse to act pitifull and follow.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      The pedophilia stuff is worse than you think. It’s not necessary, either. And there’s not really commentary on it.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      This is a very odd book… and it’s really not remotely related to its description…
      Spoiler free modification to the description… the vampire girl is NOT a government experiment.. there is ZERO government anything in the book.
      The book is really 3 different parts that I’d rate as
      Part 1: 1.5 stars
      Part 2: 4 stars
      Part 3: 1.5 stars
      Word of advice, listen at 1.2 speed to minimize the creepy syrupy sexy child voice the narrator uses.
      There is, as MANY reviewers mentioned, child pornography… as for those who said the point was to make the reader uncomfortable… it’s a 53yr old vampire child who looks like a 10yr old human (considered a child by her own kind) with a 23yr old human.. it’s a really odd and unnecessary detail the author definitely could’ve changed without affecting the story.
      The child porn aspect does tone down.. and the story moves towards a much more interesting portion with character development and action in part two (approx chapter 7/8). Part 2 is the only reason I’m giving the book 2 stars.
      Then the story changes gear again in the last 1/3rd.. and becomes a rather tedious trial.. and then ends abruptly.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Ms Butler’s construction of a new vampire world was genius. I would have loved to see what would come next for Shuri and her family. Peace and light to the spirit of Octavia Butler!
    • 1/5
      Didn't read far till I saw it was about vampires.I hate vampire bookS.
    • 4/5
      As always, Butler pulls you in with her easy and catching narrative.
      It was a very different way to look at vampires, and since the beginning she makes a clear difference, so that I, a fan of Camila's and Dracula's, can completely fall in love with this type of being without reservations ?
      She poses a different way of living for vampires, which I had always wondered about: why kill the humans if you can have a life with them, like a team, and have a type of roster for the "game" we call life?
      I found it refreshing.
    • 4/5
      Read this based on seeing it on a must read list. It was ok. Not something I’d recommend to anyone though.
    • 3/5
      An interesting take on the old legend. Modern vampires have genetically crossed their genes with humans, creating the first black vampire who can walk during the day. It explores a number of racial issues. It also has quite a few uncomfortable pedophilic scenes. The main character is 53 years old but looks like she's eight or ten. Despite this she has sex with a number of adult mortals. It's fairly tame, but still might give you the heebee jeebies.
    • 4/5
      I should have started with this book first. I loved how their vampirism is very different than the typical vampirism that we know. Sure, they have similar typical vampire traits. But the way these families are described is on a whole different level. A story about Shori is who wakes up left for dead with amnesia and has no idea of who or what she is, BUT she needs blood also. So she goes on this journey to find out. I would have LOVED if the ending described her physically "matured" and that all of her memories come back. Overall, I enjoyed this book
    • 3/5
      I'll always love the way Octavia can take a concept we all know and make a whole new world with it, I liked it but I'm in a reading slump and the book felt really long
    • 5/5
      Again examining themes of power, differences, race, and the nature of relationships, Fledgling has become one of my favorite Octavia Butler books. Ms. Butler wrote that she embarked on Fledgling as a "lighter" and less serious story after completing her devastatingly dystopian Parable of the Sower series. I don't know if she intended to make it a series - I only wish that she had lived long enough to have that option.

      This narrator was fine, but I prefer the narration provided by Tracey Leigh in the Blackstone Audio version (available through some public libraries).
    • 5/5
      An uncommon, unexpected, and thrilling vampire story. There are none others like it.
    • 4/5
      I wanted to like this, and some of it was good, but it felt like most of the vampire stuff didn't explore anything new until very late in the book, and it was largely slow and unclear until halfway through.I'm also not thrilled with the sex tie-ins and the main character looking like she's 10 or 11.
    • 3/5
      Octavia Butler reimagines what it is to be a vampire, with a far more sensible, caring, symbiotic relationship than the average bite ‘em and leave ‘em plotline. While the frank sexuality is uncomfortable, I was fascinated by Shori’s need to set up a group what is essentially a group marriage in order to survive. I agree with the criticisms that her need to enslave her people is deeply disturbing, but I appreciate that Butler is exploring these themes with an eye to making her audience re-examine and question the parameters of deeply unequal relationships.
    • 3/5
      Fledgeling is the story of Shori, who wakes in a cave with no memory of what has come before. She (and we) quickly come to realize that she is a vampire, lone survivor of a massacre, who lives thanks to the healing powers that vampires have, but loses her memory in the process. She soon meets Wright, a human who becomes her first "symbiant", a human companion who becomes bonded to her with the regular giving of his blood. The book then covers their journey to learn about vampires and about Shori's own peculiar history- she is the result of genetic experimenting among vampires, a dark-skinned one who can function in daylight unlike others of her kind. Some in the vampire community are appalled by this, and may have initiated the massacre (and subsequent ones as well) to try to stop it. Shori herself is a child, who looks like a 10 year old girl, though she is in her 50s (vampires age slowly). Yes even as a child she must have symbiants to survive. I was put off by the sexualized nature of the vampire-human connection- Butler makes the symbiosis explicitly sexy, essentially orgasmic, which is fine in one sense (many vampire stories have this element) but is icky when the reader pictures the sexiness involves someone who looks like a 10 year old girl.There are many scenes in which other characters explain at great length various aspects of vampire life or culture to Shori- the world building is well-thought out, and the explanations are useful and important but also tedious. As a setup for future stories and books that's OK I guess- we won't have to keep reading that tedium if we already know- but it definitely slowed down this volume. Butler dies unexpectedly soon after publishing this book, and it seems clear that this was setting up future volumes that were never written.As with much of Butler's output, this centers Blackness- Shori's persecution is really due to the color of her skin, and her enemies are essentially vampire white supremacists. This gives some nice space to exploration of prejudice and persecution.The book builds to the climax of a trial for those who are responsible for the massacres that have destroyed Shori's family. I found the trial tedious too, without much suspense.In sum, I see the world as cool and well-thought out, but this story doesn't really work that well.
    • 5/5
      The Ina had always been here alongside humanity. They have longer written records than us and they can pass for us - except that they cannot survive under the sun and they need human blood to survive. Yes, they are the vampires of all the mythologies of the world - except as usual things are not exactly as myths will make you believe them to be. We do not know this when the novel starts - we are in the head of a creature who can reason but has no memories of what happened. She is badly hurt but seems to be recovering. No memories come back but some feelings and knowledge occasionally filters in and allows our narrator to find some security for awhile. She is the only survivor of her household - everyone else died in the fires that destroyed her home - and when she finally finds someone else who knows her and give her back her own name, Shori Matthews, they get destroyed as well. And she is off, trying to find what happened to everyone and why and hot to survive and keep her people safe. Shori is different - she is black in a race consisting of pale white people. Her family had been playing with genetics after they realized that the answer to the biggest problem for the Ina is melanin - while Shori still burns under the sun, she can stay awake during the day and she can even survive in the light for awhile if needed (although she blisters a bit). And it becomes clear before long that this is the reason for the violence that engulfed the Ina - they may be a different species but they seem to have learned racism from their human companions. The novel can be disturbing in places - Shori is 53 but he body is that of a 10 years old girl and that makes all of the sexual scenes very disturbing - none of them is really explicit but they are in there. It is an exploration of the difference - you need to remember what she is (even when we did not know what the Ina are, we knew she was different and that she can control people we her bites). It is a coming of age story for an amnesiac child (even if she is old enough in human years, she is still an Ina child - even if that means something else for them) and it is an exploration of a race which looks like us but is not human. The latter part of the novel deals with the politics of the Ina and that's where you start realizing just how different they are - from keeping symbionts (humans tied to Ina) to their understanding of personal freedoms and choices. This is the last novel published by Butler and it may have become the beginning of another series - the story itself has a good ending in the book but it could have easily been continued. She does not shy from bringing in various vampire lore and myths - sometimes confirming them in her story, sometimes ridiculing them. The Ina are not Dracula and yet they come from the same region and some of their stories match - every myth has a kernel of truth. Using the vampires to explore gender roles and racism is not something you will see every day. In less capable hands, it could have become a joke. Butler pulls it off - it is not a perfect novel but it is a very good one. And just like Lauren in the Earthseed series, Shori is a flawed young woman who is trying to keep the people she feels responsible for safe. And while doing that, she makes mistakes, people die but ultimately she follows her own path, learning about the world and herself in the process.
    • 4/5
      Octavia Butler excels at creating new and different ways for human beings and intimate aliens to live, relate, and reveal themselves. I read this book in a day, staying up late to finish, and wished it were longer so I could find out more about what will happen to Renee/Shori and her household.
    • 3/5
      Well enough written to keep me engaged. Not a rereader. Thankfully, the vampires don't sparkle.
    • 2/5
      Phh. I don't like vampire stories, I think I got an overdose in my teen years and never really recovered. I did not enjoy this book and I can't explain my way around it. What made it worse was the reader of the audio book: Tracey Leigh fabricated a British accent for one of the characteres that was simply perplexing. It was a completely self-fabricated accent and painful to listen. I don't like overt empathising and use of different voices for characters, but this was so over the top it was ridiculous. I'll be avoiding her from now on.
    • 3/5
      Good story. Not great characters, like others of hers I have read.
    • 5/5
      Octavia Butler's last novel explores familiar themes: racism, minorities with unique abilities and unique liabilities, and loss of memory. The main characters are a mix of normal humans and a race of symbionts who require blood to survive. This is not your ordinary vampire novel, although once or twice I thought of the irony that Stephanie Meyer was writing the first "Twilight" novel at about the same time that Butler was writing Fledgling. Fledgling is not light reading, although there are something like romance themes in it. Butler's concerns are more serious than entertainment alone and, sadly , more relevant than ever. The only disappointing thing about Fledgling is that Butler died before writing any more to explore symbiosis and cultural differences between humans and her "vampires", and to wrestle with the ethics of power and relationships between people who may not be equals.
    • 3/5
      The story is well told in excellent Butler Style. A new interesting take on vampires, one that may hold interest even for those who don't enjoy vampire storiesMy one complaint is that the main character appears childlike yet she participates in sexual activity, which ruined the story for me. All I could think about while reading was pedophiles and the sexualization of children. I can see that this wasn't her intent, but still, the world doesn't need more pedophile culture. We have enough grooming of young girls into the pornographic world to be used by men. I didn't like the reminder of the toxic porn culture we live in. I wish I hadn't read this book. I still love Butler's style and recommend every other book of hers that I've read. But if you don't like porn or pedophilia, I don't recommend this book.
    • 4/5
      This is a very interesting and well thought out re-imagining of vampire lore. The humans, and their relationships with each other and vampires, are also well represented. There is enormous complexity to the world created, although this sometimes made it feel like an lesson in vampirology more than a story. The story itself is mostly a murder mystery, although many readers would categorise it as horror or sci-fi. The genres blend seamlessly, so calling it any of those is correct.
    • 5/5
      Again, I'm awed by Octavia's prose, the massive strength of her characters, and the compelling plotlines. This goes against many "traditional" vampire stories but creates a more realistic species that I truly wish we shared this planet with.
    • 3/5
      My first Butler book.

      I like the idea, and the exploration of it. I feel weirded out and curious about it at the same time, because it's got this total Mormon-polygamist/60's-commune feel to it that goes pretty much without question. Like, there are characters who think it's weird or are trying to come to terms with jealousy and giving up their Real World life for the commune, but that's mostly in the background. Mostly everybody is totally drinking the kool-aid and having a pretty good time with it. Still, vampires as a possible extraterrestrial species living in symbiosis with humans -- I like the idea. It's a much more science-fictiony take on the genre.

      Making Shori physically appear as a young girl and then hooking her up right away with this adult, hairy male was very strange and squicked me. In fact, I think that's one of the main things that made me think of Mormon polygamists. I can't quite figure out why Butler decided to do that.

      Making vampire society matriarchal and bringing race into the issue (particularly with black skin making vampires sun-resistant) were both very good decisions because they gave the story more dimensions.

      And this is totally subjective, but I love that it takes place partially in the Pacific Northwest, because I'm a West Coast girl and I love having my little temperate rainforest written about. (I know Butler lived in Seattle. With her and Le Guin on our coast, we rock pretty hard with the feminist sci-fi!)

      I'm interested to read Butler's other books, though, because this one seems so utilitarian in its descriptions. Characters and ideas and plot take precedence over aesthetics or setting. I like a little rumination and beauty in books. I really want to love Butler, though. I've heard this is not among her best books, so I'll be reading others hopefully sometime soon.