Adulthood Rites
Xenogenesis: Book Two
Transgendered secondary characters. Gender issues; queer issues.
. Highly Recommended.
March 15, 2006 | Revid 365 < prev | next >
Akin Iyapo is Lilith's son: the first genetically-constructed male to be born to a human female and potentially the most dangerous offspring yet created between humans and Oankali. His life is a test of Oankali ingenuity. More than any other construct, Akin comes closest to the edge of the Human Contradiction that doomed humanity in the first place, the self-destructive tendency to put humanity's considerable intelligence to the service of its basest hierarchical desires. If he can learn to do otherwise, he will prove that the Oankali's trade with humanity is viable—whether he wants to or not.
I've never before read a book that made me feel so sharply conflicted even as I was reading it. I kept going back and forth between the only choice the Oankali had left for humanity: join them, or become extinct. The word "purity" was carefully avoided in the book, but just as carefully implied. At times, the humans' dilemma took on the ugly shape of racism, but other times it was something different, reaching into the primitive recesses of the psyche and touching some unnameable fear of dissolution, some core of the human self that utterly rejects manipulation of any kind—even to the cost of its own destruction. What was more abhorrent: what the Oankali were doing to humanity, or what humanity was doing to itself?
In Akin's struggles we find a contradiction, but not the one the Oankali fear. He gives us a poignant reflection of our own need for hope, of an opportunity to change, even if the chances are slim—or none—making this human-Oankali hybrid the most human character of all.
Butler is a master at her craft, carefully building both human and alien societies and then letting their stories unfold naturally through the voices of those who are an integral part of them. Adulthood Rites is as complex and emotionally uncomfortable as Dawn, but even more thought-provoking and astonishing in its depth. It's the only book I've ever read that has examined the human fear of difference—of change—on such an immense scale. A truly unforgettable story.
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