Octavia Butler tackles the creation of a new religion, the making of a god, and the ultimate fate of humanity in her Earthseed series, which began with Parable of the Sower, and now continues with Parable of the Talents. The saga began with the near-future dystopian tale of Sower, in which young Lauren Olamina began to realize her destiny as a leader of people dispossessed and destroyed by the crumbling of society. The basic principles of Lauren's faith, Earthseed, were contained in a collection of deceptively simple proverbs that Lauren used to recruit followers. She teaches that "God is change" and that humanity's ultimate destiny is among the stars.

In Parable of the Talents, the seeds of change that Lauren planted begin to bear fruit, but in unpredictable and brutal ways. Her small community is destroyed, her child is kidnapped, and she is imprisoned by sadistic zealots. She must find a way to escape and begin again, without family or friends. Her single-mindedness in teaching Earthseed may be her only chance to survive, but paradoxically, may cause the ultimate estrangement of her beloved daughter. Parable of the Talents is told from both mother's and daughter's perspectives, but it is the narrative of Lauren's grown daughter, who has seen her mother made into a deity of sorts, that is the most compelling. Butler's writing is simple and elegant, and her storytelling skills are superb, as usual. Fans will be eagerly awaiting the next installment in what promises to be a moving and adventurous saga. --Therese Littleton


From Publishers Weekly
Lauren Olamina, a black teenager, grew up in a 21st-century America that was tearing itself apart. Global warming, massive unemployment, gang warfare and corporate greed combined to break down society in general and her impoverished southern California neighborhood in particular. A victim of hyperempathy syndrome, a disorder that compels its victims to believe they feel others' pain, Lauren found herself homeless and alone in a violent world. Escaping from the urban jungle of Los Angeles, Lauren founded Acorn, a hard-working, prosperous rural community based on the teachings of Earthseed, a religion she herself created and centered on the ideas that God is Change and that humanity's destiny is to go to the stars. Butler's extraordinary Parable of the Sower (1996) detailed the aforementioned events. In this equally powerful sequel, Acorn is destroyed by the rising forces of Christian fundamentalism, led by the newly elected U.S. president, the Reverend Andrew Steele Jarret. A handsome man and persuasive orator, seemingly modeled in part on Pat Robertson, Jarret converts millions to his sect, Christian America, while his thugs imprison, rape and murder those they label "heathens," all the while kidnapping their children in order to raise them in Christian households. The narrative is both impassioned and bitter as Butler weaves a tale of a frighteningly believable near-future dystopia. Lauren, at once loving wife and mother, prophet and fanatic, victim and leader, gains stature as one of the most intense and well-developed protagonists in recent SF. Though not for the faint-hearted, this work stands out as a testament to the author's enormous talent, and to the human spirit.. Author tour. (Nov.) FYI: In 1995, Butler received a MacArthur Foundation ("genius") Award.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
In this brilliant sequel to Parable of the Sower (LJ 10/15/93), Nebula and Hugo Award winner Butler continues the compelling story of Lauren Olamina, chronicling her struggle for survival in a socially and economically depressed California in the 2030s. Lauren has founded a quiet community called Acorn, where she teaches people about Earthseed, her belief that God is simply another name for Change. Her community of believers is threatened, however, by the election of an ultraconservative president opposed to any religion not his own. Among his followers are fanatical terrorists who will stop at nothing to destroy what Lauren has built, including forcibly separating parents from their children. Butler tells this story through Lauren's journal entries, her poetry, and commentary from her daughter. Powerful, moving, and beautifully written, this book belongs in every library.?Laurel Bliss, New Haven, CTCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Butler concludes the spiritual and physical journey, begun in Parable of the Sower (1993), of Lauren Oya Olamina, an 18-year-old African American who has survived most of her family's demise and a lengthy journey on the dangerous roads of early-twenty-first-century California. She has created her own religion, Earthseed, which empowers people to master change and has as its ultimate goal the colonization of other worlds. Olamina has gathered around her a community of outcasts and wanderers that is beginning to thrive when a fundamentalist Christian wins the presidency. His zealots overrun Olamina's village, enslave the adults with pain-inflicting collars, and adopt the children into Christian American families. Olamina must somehow free herself and her followers and begin another painful journey to find her infant daughter. She is unexpectedly reunited with her brother Marcus, but instead of helping each other, they are on opposite sides of a deep religious chasm. The novel revolves around the question of which is more important to Olamina: her fledgling religion or her own flesh and blood. Roberta Johnson

FROM OUR EDITORS

A powerfully wrought novel describing an America permeated with violence, religious persecution, and the will to overcome such adversity, Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Talents explores the large and small social ramifications of a group of survivors banding together in faith to prevail against anarchy. Butler gives us a well-proportioned fusion of near-future struggle and subtle science fiction, all layered upon an engaging groundwork of human courage, spiritual doctrine, enslavement, and savagery in an anarchistic America.

In 2032, five years after losing her family and setting out on a quest to find peace in a chaotic land, Lauren Oya Olamina has gathered more than 60 people in the self-sufficient community called Acorn. Olamina, an African-American hyper-empath (a person who can feel others' pain so intensely it is often incapacitating), is the creator and prophet for the new religion called Earthseed. "God is Change" is Earthseed's basic belief; the religion teaches personal harmony and the hope of one day reaching the stars. To that end, the verses in Olamina's "Books of the Living" give understanding to a perpetually shifting world of mistrust, slavery, disorder, and government sanctioned witch-hunts.

After years of separation, Olamina discovers that her teenage brother, Marcus, has also survived; she immediately welcomes him to Acorn. As an unseasoned Christian preacher, Marcus is suspicious of the cultlike aspects of Earthseed and grows more and more distant from its ideals. Now that Olamina is newly pregnant, Bankole, Olamina's much older physician husband, wishes to find a more established township in which to practice medicine and protect his family.

However, soon a fundamentalist Christian named Jarret is elected president of the United States, and his insistence on burning non-Christian churches and murdering those of other faiths becomes very popular. Acorn is attacked, the women raped, the men killed, and all survivors are enslaved. But Olamina eventually escapes and sets out to recover her friends and family and rebuild Earthseed.

Parable of the Talents is written in a composite of narratives from Olamina's journals, Bankole's memoirs, and Marcus's own accounts. Just as importantly, there are sections from Olamina's unborn daughter who writes commentary at a much later date; this allows for a more complete vision of Earthseed as religious, political, and humanistic methodology. Olamina is willing to put the destiny of Earthseed above her own life and the lives of her family, which at times makes her nearly the single-minded zealot that Jarret is. Rather than presenting Olamina as a perfect spiritual leader, Butler allows us multiple outside points of view -- as well as Olamina's own self-doubts and insecurities -- to present a much fuller and well-rounded character and story.

Here, once again, is Octavia E. Butler's enticing stew of varied human needs, capacities, weaknesses, and enigmatic doctrines born from a constantly changing world. The author knows how to compound elements into an intricate mixture of personal and civil uncertainties, as well as ethical and emotional dilemmas. Sociological situations underpinning science fiction have always been Butler's forte, and this novel admirably continues that tradition.

The author is wonderfully skilled at capturing several underlying, intertwined subtexts at once: We are witness to a culture that is well acquainted with high-technology but has great difficulty in replacing or producing anything new. We visit a land that is familiar yet alien, and in continuous flux. There is real unease for the reader while waiting for the inevitable assault upon a new faith as the ugly, bigoted era becomes even more intolerant. In Parable of the Talents, the reader will discover an America that relies heavily on a past it can barely recall, and behold the arrival of a horrifying but intriguing new dawn. Octavia E. Butler evokes a frightening future that eventually sprouts the compassion, mercy, and beauty of Earthseed.

--Tom Piccirilli

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In her longest and arguably greatest novel, the long-awaited Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler revisits her familiar themes of alienation and transcendence, violence and spirituality, separation and community in the shockingly familiar, broken world of 2032.

Parable of the Talents continues the story which began in Parable of the Sower. That novel's heroine, Lauren, now has a daughter, and Parable of the Talents is told from the daughter's point of view. A new government is in power, led by a far-right religious crusader as president, and wars are fought throughout the North American continent.

This is a book about a society whose very fabric has been torn and where the basic physical and emotional needs of people seem almost impossible to meet. And yet human life oddly thrives as the young Lauren of Parable of the Sower here blossoms into a complex and credible woman.

SYNOPSIS

Octavia E. Butler returns to a dystopic near future in the long-awaited sequel her acclaimed genre-straddling novel Parable of the Sower. Set in 2032, Parable of the Talents finds African-American hyper-empath Lauren Oya Olamina at the head of the self-sufficient community of Acorn. The creator and prophet of the new religious doctrine known as Earthseed, whose basic belief is "God Is Change," Lauren strives to provide understanding to her determined band of survivors in a perpetually shifting world of mistrust, slavery, anarchy, and government-sanctioned witch-hunts. But when a new government, calling itself Christian America, comes to power, with the fanatical Reverend Andrew Steele Jarrett as its president, Acorn is destroyed by religious terrorists, and its children are sent to be raised in fundamentalist Christian homes.

FROM THE CRITICS

Washington Post Book World

Octavia E. Butler is one of the finest voices in fiction....period.

Publishers Weekly

Lauren Olamina, a black teenager, grew up in a 21st-century America that was tearing itself apart. Global warming, massive unemployment, gang warfare and corporate greed combined to break down society in general and her impoverished southern California neighborhood in particular. A victim of hyperempathy syndrome, a disorder that compels its victims to believe they feel others' pain, Lauren found herself homeless and alone in a violent world. Escaping from the urban jungle of Los Angeles, Lauren founded Acorn, a hard-working, prosperous rural community based on the teachings of Earthseed, a religion she herself created and centered on the ideas that God is Change and that humanity's destiny is to go to the stars. Butler's extraordinary Parable of the Sower (1996) detailed the aforementioned events. In this equally powerful sequel, Acorn is destroyed by the rising forces of Christian fundamentalism, led by the newly elected U.S. president, the Reverend Andrew Steele Jarret. A handsome man and persuasive orator, seemingly modeled in part on Pat Robertson, Jarret converts millions to his sect, Christian America, while his thugs imprison, rape and murder those they label "heathens," all the while kidnapping their children in order to raise them in Christian households. The narrative is both impassioned and bitter as Butler weaves a tale of a frighteningly believable near-future dystopia. Lauren, at once loving wife and mother, prophet and fanatic, victim and leader, gains stature as one of the most intense and well-developed protagonists in recent SF. Though not for the faint-hearted, this work stands out as a testament to the author's enormous talent, and to the human spirit.. Author tour. (Nov.) FYI: In 1995, Butler received a MacArthur Foundation ("genius") Award.

Library Journal

In this brilliant sequel to Parable of the Sower (LJ 10/15/93), Nebula and Hugo Award winner Butler continues the compelling story of Lauren Olamina, chronicling her struggle for survival in a socially and economically depressed California in the 2030s. Lauren has founded a quiet community called Acorn, where she teaches people about Earthseed, her belief that God is simply another name for Change. Her community of believers is threatened, however, by the election of an ultraconservative president opposed to any religion not his own. Among his followers are fanatical terrorists who will stop at nothing to destroy what Lauren has built, including forcibly separating parents from their children. Butler tells this story through Lauren's journal entries, her poetry, and commentary from her daughter. Powerful, moving, and beautifully written, this book belongs in every library.--Laurel Bliss, New Haven, CT

Gerald Jonas

Butler's narrative skills are impressive....Conceding that Earthseed 'isn't a very comforting belief system,' Olamina achieves prophetic stature by insisting that in the long run the true test of a religion is whether the solace it offers conforms with the nature of the universe we live in. -- The New York Times Book Review

Analog Science Fiction & Fact