The Fledgling

Fledgling by Octavia Butler is not a science fiction book. My local library's science fiction section is a mess. All sorts of books are thrown in among the truly random assortment of sci-fi. So when I was rushed over to the section with seconds to choose a book I just grabbed the first novel that looked like it was printed recently. A quick scan of the 'Praise for Octavia Bulter' revealed someone mentioned her writing was like cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is like catnip to me, I can't resist. Only upon exiting the library did I realize I was holding a vampire novel set in the modern day. I decided to just roll with it because a little variety can be a good thing.

As mentioned Fledgling is a modern day vampire story. Like many vampire stories written it is not a horror story but rather an exploration of what it means to be predator among humans. I'm a humanist. I tend to root for the humans no matter the narrative. So generally I have trouble reading super sympathetic portrayals of serial murders (or at the very least superhumans who feed off regular folk). I enjoy the ethical tightrope that vamps have to walk but in most writers' hands vampires are totally justified in doing what they do and any messy questions are totally ignored or hand-waved away. I remember one incredibly poorly written book (whose name escapes me) where the cheerful solution to the 'ethical human eater' dilemma was to only kill annoying people. As opposed to only killing criminals. Thankfully, Fledgling is very much concerned with the ethical questions raised by vampires. On the other hand the novel raises whole host of other icky moral situations...

Fledgling is about a young vampiress who has lost both her memory and her family following a brutal attack. The narrative follows the fledgling vampire, Shori, as she pieces together who attacked her family and what it means to be a vampire. A good deal of the book is about uncovering all the various rules of vampire society and the full extent of their powers. But in order to give a proper review of Fledgling I must talk about what these powers are so be warned now. I won't ruin anything but if you want to read this tabula rasa you have been warned.
[Spoilers] Like any mythical creature vampires operate by different rules for each author. Here is a rundown for this book:
-Super strength/speed
-Sleeps during day and burns in daylight
-Hypnosis. Any human bitten by a vampire is rendered completely and totally under that vampires control to the point that if a vampire orders a bitten person to die they will kill themselves. Thus they can wipe out memories and manufacture new ones as well.
-Super sexy. Vampire bites cause intense pleasure and are addictive.
-Nigh invulnerable. First chapter the main character is recovering from being burnt to a cinder and shot in the head twice.
-Totally different species than human. No one 'becomes' a vampire.
[/Spoilers]



So lets talk about positive first. This is a well written book. Butler is a professional author and you can tell. The book clips along at a good pace with crisp prose. It's written in first person perspective and the alieness of Shori's thoughts can be very interesting. She isn't human, and it shows in both how she talks and thinks. She loves her family of humans but it's definitely different than human love. And as a human being myself, I feel this is where the book runs into trouble.

Shori is still a child on the vampire timescale. She is close to full maturity but cannot have children yet. What she can and does have though is a lot of sex. Perhaps this is a good time to mention that Shori looks like a ten year old. So, um, yeah. I... I'm not sure where I stand on this. She's not human, she's not ten but just the idea that this sexually voracious creature looks like ten year old is creeping me the math out*. This of course raises questions: why? Why choose to have your main character look like a ten year old? Why not make her look 16 or 17 years old (young but old enough to consent)?

Then theres the structure of the vampire lifestyle. Each vampire has seven or eight human 'symbionts' which are a vampire's food source/companions. Since vampire bites are super sexytimes they basically count as lovers as well. Symbionts can and do marry other people but must remain close by their vampire. They all live in big houses in rural areas far away from other people. All of which means that they are pretty close to being polygamist Mormons. At one point a character says that being a symbiont is the closest anyone has come to a workable group marriage. The arrangement works particularly well when the Matriarch (or Patriarch) of the family has total verbal control of every member of the family I'm guessing. Once again I'm not sure what exactly Octavia Butler is trying to say here. She could have chosen different rules or societies for vampires. But she went with this. The 'family' awkwardness is actually a minor subplot of the book but it's shown as a totally positive situation. So, yup, polygamy.

Oh yeah, so it turns out daughter vampires can't live with male vampires including their brothers and their fathers because, um, they smell too enticing. Like sexy enticing. So there's that quicky factoid for you.

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Fledgling is a disturbing read and puzzling. I'm really not sure why it was written, what its overall message is. Supposedly this a book about racism. But while racism exists in it Fledgling doesn't actually have much to say about it besides that racism is bad. None of the vampire stuff adds anything to the racism message. So what you are left with is book about sexy sexy ten year olds and joyous polygamy. Not ideal. Fledgling only feeds on 2 of 5 symbionts.

*'math' is how I cuss now.