Book Review: Imago - Octavia E. Butler

Published: July 2019

4 - Stars

My book review policy

Each book in this series takes a brand new character and throws them into a brand new situation that arises directly from the nature of this world that Butler has created. You know you have an interesting world when you call tell so many stories in it and they are all interesting. Who knows, if Butler had lived longer we may have another entry. Certain the human colony on Mars would be an interesting place to visit.

This is by far the strangest book of the series and my least favorite. Still very good by any means. The characters and story were interesting but it didn’t quite live up to the first two novels for me.

It could be because I read them all immediately after one another. I felt like the first two books had a lot to say about human nature. This book didn’t seem to add anything new.

Most of it was focused on the relationships of a new Human/Oankali hybrid. While we do get a lot more insight into the alien Oankali race and how they operate it didn’t feel like there were any new insights into humanity like we got so heavily in the first two books. A lot of the narrative was devoted to Oankali seeming to lust after human beings to form mating groups with.

While the characters and story were interesting, it just wasn’t as meaningful as the rest of the series.

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Rob Skidmore writes science fiction stories about being human.

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