I don't know what to rate this book. It was excellent, and an emotionally difficult read for me. I hated it, but not based on its quality but rather for the manner in which Butler asks her questions of the reader. Those questions fell like hammer blows. It is powerful.

Butler's concerns seem to be those of survival, those of the compromises we make to remain just and moral in the face of animality. I am shaken by how neatly she evokes various parasites and fungi here on this planet already that hijack their host's behavior to their own ends, and assures the reader that we are all just bio-chemical machines. She seems to ask, knowing this, what to we retain of ourselves?

If you been a victim of rape or sexual assault, this book might be one to approach slowly. If you, like me, have a body-horror level of revulsion toward pregnancy, this might also be a challenging read. It is entirely worthwhile.