Ms. Hen reviews Dawn

 

Dawn

Octavia E. Butler

Hatchett Book Group

1987

Ms. Hen decided to read this book, because she was browsing in the library in her city, and she was looking for a particular book that was supposed to be there, but was not, but she came across this author in the science fiction section, and she has read several books by her before, so she picked this one up, and checked it out. When she was checking out her book, a little girl nearby said, "Do people actually get books here?" Ms. Hen worries for the future of the world when she hears things like this. Does this child think a library is a place to plug in her phone?

This novel is about a woman named Lilith who is trapped in what she thinks is a prison for a long time, but she finds out later that she is on a space ship, and is being held by aliens. A nuclear war on Earth devastated the planet, and most of the inhabitants ended up dead. These extra terrestrials rescued some, and put them in stasis, waiting for the Earth to be able to repopulated again.

The aliens, called the Oankali, want to take genes from humans and mix them with their genes to make a better race. They decided that Lilith should be their leader, and instructed her to awaken a group of humans. At first, Lilith is angry that she was captured by aliens, but eventually she accepts it. She works to wake up the other humans on the ship, and they prepare to go to Earth, but conflict occurs.

Ms. Hen thinks this might be the most uneventful novel about abduction by aliens that she has ever read. The first half of the book is very slow, and she almost gave up reading it. This novel gets better in the middle when the other humans wake up, and they have to decide how to work together. None of them want Lilith to be their leader, because they think she's one of the aliens.

Ms. Hen continued reading this because she is a huge fan of Ms. Butler, and admires her other books. She understands that some authors write bad books at times, but there are four in this series. She doesn't think she could read the rest, at least not any time soon.

At the Boston Public Library