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A review by inkerly
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
5.0
UPDATE May 2021: 6 years later and the book is still that good. This book was my first African American science fiction novel and made me want to read and explore more AA science fiction. I was and still am now completely enamored by it. I’ve now read my fair share of Afrofuturistic novels and this novel still comes out on top. It’s raw and real and a grisly page turning reality on slavery and blood kinship in the U.S. I will continue to reread it to celebrate the joy and genius that is Octavia Butler, and explore her other books as well.
I have never had a book that made me read it from start to finish, all in under 7 hours. Although this is my first time reading from the acclaimed author, I was blown away by the page-turning plot, heart-throbbing cast, and eloquent time travel scenes. This is probably the first real science fiction novel that I've read, and I give it a solid 95%. But what I love most about the book is how it leaves me wondering what will happen, what the protagonist's fate is, what why the sequence of events of the book have mapped her destiny so.
Characters. Plot. Theme. All brilliant.
The story kicks off with a paycheck-to-paycheck-living 1976 suburban interracial couple, Dana and Kevin Franklin. Stiff with cash and familial acceptance, however, Dana and her white husband Kevin still live in modest content with their companionship. Shortly after packing boxes for their new apartment, Dana falls to the floor, lightweight and dizzy from her fall, until she wakes up in the 1815 antebellum South, just in time to rescue a drowning 4 year boy, whom is later found out to be Rufus. Bigoted and accident-prone, Rufus' near-death experiences grow more violent and dangerous, and every time, she is whisked from her comfortable post-slavery realm into the dark depths of Rufus' cold, bitter one. And unless she understand why he seems to "trap" her in his world, her hopes of surviving as a slave in her large lapses of 'time-travel' become severely slimmer.
Stained by her blackness, though, Dana struggles to hang her life in the balance, and while watching Rufus, and her time in antebellum Maryland, she becomes tangled in a vicious cycle of emotional and physical pain, fear, confusion, and hope.
Though I'm not quite sure what the message of the story was, or why Dana was essential to Rufus' survival, into the book's conclusion, I seemed not to care. The novel is flawlessly written, and I wish (if there isn't already) that this was a series. So sad that more people don't know about it, it was eye-opening and gave me a new perspective on things.
I have never had a book that made me read it from start to finish, all in under 7 hours. Although this is my first time reading from the acclaimed author, I was blown away by the page-turning plot, heart-throbbing cast, and eloquent time travel scenes. This is probably the first real science fiction novel that I've read, and I give it a solid 95%. But what I love most about the book is how it leaves me wondering what will happen, what the protagonist's fate is, what why the sequence of events of the book have mapped her destiny so.
Characters. Plot. Theme. All brilliant.
The story kicks off with a paycheck-to-paycheck-living 1976 suburban interracial couple, Dana and Kevin Franklin. Stiff with cash and familial acceptance, however, Dana and her white husband Kevin still live in modest content with their companionship. Shortly after packing boxes for their new apartment, Dana falls to the floor, lightweight and dizzy from her fall, until she wakes up in the 1815 antebellum South, just in time to rescue a drowning 4 year boy, whom is later found out to be Rufus. Bigoted and accident-prone, Rufus' near-death experiences grow more violent and dangerous, and every time, she is whisked from her comfortable post-slavery realm into the dark depths of Rufus' cold, bitter one. And unless she understand why he seems to "trap" her in his world, her hopes of surviving as a slave in her large lapses of 'time-travel' become severely slimmer.
Stained by her blackness, though, Dana struggles to hang her life in the balance, and while watching Rufus, and her time in antebellum Maryland, she becomes tangled in a vicious cycle of emotional and physical pain, fear, confusion, and hope.
Though I'm not quite sure what the message of the story was, or why Dana was essential to Rufus' survival, into the book's conclusion, I seemed not to care. The novel is flawlessly written, and I wish (if there isn't already) that this was a series. So sad that more people don't know about it, it was eye-opening and gave me a new perspective on things.