Dawn

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / Classic / Butler, Octavia	4-week checkout	Due 04-26-2024
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / Classic / Butler, Octavia	4-week checkout	Due 05-18-2024
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / Classic / Butler, Octavia	4-week checkout	Due 03-27-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / Classic / Butler, Octavia	4-week checkout	Due 05-17-2024

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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Summary / Annotation
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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Science Fiction For Everyone submitted by fbhills on July 29, 2016, 1:54pm I typically don't read science fiction, but this book was fantastic. I had a lot of fun reading this!

Powerful and thought provoking submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on July 21, 2018, 3:59pm (review contains some spoilers) Octavia Butler is an astounding writer. She crafts stories out of interesting ideas and explores fascinating philosophical ideas with them. _Dawn_ begins with the end of Earth as we know it as humans destroy it in a blaze of atomic fire. Aliens rescue a few (relative to the whole population) humans, study them, and renew the planet.

The characters, and Lilith (the focal human) in particular, are deep and fully developed. They have core personality and experiences, but respond to their circumstances and change and grow. They learn. This is even true of the Oankali, although they are presented as being a “wiser” and more experienced species, when they make mistakes with humans even after ages studying them.

For me, the story was primarily one about consent. Can people who have been captured and have no options genuinely consent to anything? The book is about the Oankali who will save humanity, but the price is the genetic combination of the two races. Can any human give that consent for the rest of humanity? There are several sexual encounters of various sorts where the oolai read the human’s body and mind and determine that the encounter is wanted, even though the human says no. Is it rape? Especially in this “me too” era, I found this book to be thought-provoking to the point of being disturbing. It smacks of White Americans knowing “better” than Native Americans or Black people about how they should live or work or educate their children or practice religion. It’s about violence, fear, imprisonment, psychological torture, survival, and survival of the species. It asks “what would YOU do?” It is simple to read and disturbing to contemplate.

My one story complaint is that for a book so inherently focused on sex and characters, there are no humans who are not straightforwardly heterosexual and almost all are very stereotypically masculine (either protective or rapist) males or feminine (creating community or needing protection) females. This was first published in 1987, and that’s a ridiculous oversight.

A powerful book, though hard to read. Recommended.

Hooked me submitted by khrobinson on July 13, 2023, 8:42pm I don’t read much science fiction, but want to read more Octavia Butler. This book used sci-go themes to make observations about human nature and power dynamics. By the time I reached the end, I was eager to read book 2 in this 3 book series.