An appropriate but underwhelming end to a thought-provoking trilogy.

I discovered Octavia Butler by reading short story in Science Fiction Anthology.... love her work ( )

Octavia E. Butler is an amazing writer. It doesn't matter whether or not I like the story she has written, when I'm reading it I'm not reading a book, I'm there in her world, totally transported. Imago is no exception. This is the third and final book in the Xenogenesis series (a.k.a. Lilith's Brood). There are a lot of very complicated relationships in this which are explained fully in previous books. I have to admit that I got a bit bogged down in them as they were re-explained at the beginning of this one. This is told from the perspective of Lilith's youngest offspring who is now 29 years old. Lilith, a human, gave birth to it, but she is only one of its five parents (note the previously mentioned complicated relationships). What was great about this story was the way it took things that humans do that you and I would find perfectly understandable and then took a step back to look at them from an alien perspective. Suddenly these rational human reactions seem completely irrational. After seeing through alien eyes for a while I came to totally agree with the alien perspective. It wasn't until several hours after I finished the book that I realized that if I were put in the position of these humans, I would probably have acted similarly--I would be a "resister" too! Totally awesome writing with a very imaginative story. My biggest complaint about this book is that it's too short! ( )

(Amy) So, this is an awesome book, and you should read it. In fact, you should read pretty much everything Octavia Butler has ever written, so far as I can tell from having read around half of it so far, because the woman wrote some fantastic SF.

However, when I picked up the book to booklog it, I got sidetracked by a snippet of a review on the back cover, which has led me off on a tangent and left me with no more than the above to say about the book itself. The review-quotation: "...She gives us a completely alien yet strangely human race and a gene's eye view of ourselves." - John Varley.

Now, I've not actually read any Varley that I can remember offhand, but he is an SF writer, and one would think he would know better than to make a comment like that. Humanity does not, assuming a universe like the one in this book, have a monopoly on characteristics that we recognize. If we recognize traits like our own in an alien race, that doesn't mean the alien race is human-like. It means we have things in common. It might even be a bit of evidence that the traits are common to all sophont-kind, though obviously more study would be needed before making a generalization like that.

Among myriad other roles, SF often serves to allow us to take a better look at ourselves by showing us the sameness in the foreign, by making the strangest and most alien creatures sympathetic to us. This is not the same as making them human.

Even if, in this particular book, they sort of are. Well, partly, anyway.
( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/ze... ) ( )

This is the last in the trilogy and I have to say I'm a bit disappointed it didn't have a more 'definite' ending. I was really hoping for a epilogue, a kind of and then they left earth and sailed off into the wild blue yonder but instead it ended as if there could be another book written very similar to this one (and the 2nd book).

It is kind of strange that she picked new characters as main characters for this book and then just had some cameos of the old characters. It makes it seem much like a classic trilogy and more like a couple stories set in the same world.

Another strange thing about this is that she didn't ever explain again how the very complicated family structures work or how the aliens actually look. I read the first book more than a year ago so I couldn't really remember much of it.

Writing was great, very readable like Stephen King but way more interesting and less gimmicky. Only one more Butler book to read and I will have read her entire catalog. Have to say I don't regret it. ( )