Title / Kindred
Author / Octavia E. Butler
Published / 1979
Page no. / 295
Overall Rating / ★★★★
Kindred is a historical fantasy/science fiction story original published in 1979 and follows Dana, a young African-American woman living in California in 1976, who suddenly finds herself in a pre Civil War slave plantation in Maryland, America. I’ve been meaning to check out Butler’s books for a while now and I’m glad I’ve finally pick up one of her books.
While this is not an easy read, I think it is an important one and Butler does a fantastic job at immersing you with story and world. This was my first experience reading Butler and I found that I was invested from the very beginning. The writing was fantastic throughout and definitely made me want to check out more of her works. The plot is an intense one and doesn’t shy away from showing you how brutal life would have been for the slaves back then. I haven’t actually studied this period of history before so this definitely made me more interested to do some reading around it. I think this book should be taught at schools as required reading or as a book you can choose to study. It is definitely not an easy or light read and I would recommend reading it in the right mind frame. It is fairly depressing reading this book, thinking of all the people that suffered purely down to the skin colour.
Overall I thought this was a fantastic book and I would highly recommend checking it out. I will definitely be checking out more of Butler’s works – right now the book at the top of my TBR is Parable of the Sower. I’m planning to read it some time this year hopefully. Have you guys read this book? I’d love to know what you all thought so let’s chat in the comments. I hope you are all having a wonderful day and I will see you next time.
Pippa
thelittlebookowl 
Great review. I loved ‘Kindred’ – it was the first book I read by Octavia Butler. I agree, it would be a great book to have on the school curriculum. I’ve loved everything I’ve read by this author so far – she has such insight into really challenging power dynamics. I would highly recommend Parable of the Sower, and its sequel, Parable of the Talents. The main character develops an emerging philosophy in the books which is eerily relevant to today, and made me wonder whether this author had an ability to see into the future! I also loved, ‘Fledging’ – the most thought-provoking vampire story I have ever read.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you. Oh that’s good to know. I can’t wait to check out Parable of the Sower and I’ll definitely put Fledging onto my TBR.
LikeLike
In the past months I’ve read everything Butler wrote except Kindred. I’ve been putting off what I know will be a brutal and profoundly affecting story. As you say, not an easy read.
I highly recommend the Parable series (which I just finished and posted about), although I think my favorite might still be the Xenogenesis series (aka Lilith’s Brood series). I really liked Fledgling, too! Very cool spin on the vampire story.
LikeLiked by 1 person