Clay's Ark by Octavia E. Butler Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $7.80 You Save: $9.19 (54%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.08 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Clay's Ark
Book Review: Clay's Ark: A Very Engrossing Read
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a real page-turner, and thought-provoking, but after finishing it I don't feel it left me with as much as I have come to expect from Octavia Butler. It is still a very good novel, which I recommend without reservation, but it is not as outstanding a book as the Parable novels: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents; or Kindred, or Lilith's Brood (Xenogenesis).
watziznaym@gmail.com
Book Review: Deeply engrossing
Summary: 4 Stars
This book commanded me to read it in one sitting. This is something few novels can do given my relatively short attention span. This book falls under the "What happens when ET microbes come to earth" category. Hint - we usually die. If you like this book, try Blood Music by Greg Bear.Book Review: Fantastic!
Summary: 5 Stars
Octavia Butler is the most talented SF writer I've ever come across and Clay's Ark is a fantastic piece of fantasy work that will consume you with terror and dare you to put it down. I never thought of myself as a SF-buff but what Butler writes can't be boxed into just that one genre. She's great!Book Review: Host to Millions
Summary: 4 Stars
This might be the most suspenseful of the several novels I've read from Octavia Butler, but it comes up a little short on some of her key strengths. Granted, Butler's supremely unique imagination is still at play here, in the story of a space crew that comes back to Earth with an alien virus that uses human carriers like mere conduits for relentlessly propagating itself. Another mindbendingly creative concept from Butler, but unfortunately this novel comes out rather sour and ugly in the execution. The dysfunctional near-future society that is Butler's usual motif simply becomes a depressing mess here, with no redeeming humanity. We get almost uniformly violent and pitiless characters (except for the circle of protagonists) and a depressing, disturbing parade of human misery. Thus, the dystopian aspects of this tale are missing the elements that make similar settings so compelling in Butler's better novels – such as the African mythology backdrop to "Wild Seed" or the philosophical optimism of "Parable of the Sower." There is also a structural problem with this book, in that Butler alternates chapter-by-chapter between flashbacks and events in the present, and neither of these running narratives are told completely in chronological order. This is a non-linear technique that some writers have used successfully to reinforce their themes or the suspense of the story, but here it just slows down the effectiveness of Butler's ideas. I still enthusiastically recommend the works of Octavia Butler for all fans of thought-provoking and emotionally compelling speculative fiction, but this book doesn't quite stack up with her best. [~doomsdayer520~]Book Review: Must read, overwhelmingly futurealistic!
Summary: 5 Stars
Read the book! Gets your mind focus on the future and what it can hold! Also read Kindrad!