bibliodragon

I am not a fan of the angsty, gothic vampire trope, so I really liked how Octavia Butler handled the vampires in this book. They are more sci fi vampires than fantasy, possibly alien people who form symbiotic relationships with people to feed on. The vampires (or Ina) take blood from a group of people, who in turn get the benefit of a longer life and improved immune system, but become addicted to their Ina, and if their Ina dies they will die too unless another takes them on as it were, while the Ina's venom makes them capable of exerting control over the humans they feed on. And the creepiness of this isn't shied away from, with characters discussing this and wondering just how much of their free will remains, while it is shown what can happen to humans who come under the power of Ina who think of them as nothing but tools.

And the creep factor in the feeding scenes is knocked up a notch by the fact that the main vampire character, while being over 50 years old looks like a child.

Told in the first person, we are with the main character Shori from the minute she wakes in a cave, suffering from terrible injuries and no idea who or what she is. So we discover along with her, and as her personality makes her a bit distant this is quite effective in allowing us to empathize with her. Unfortunately, compared to this the secondary characters don't really manage to stand out.

There are a lot of themes relevant to the real world running through this, from genetic engineering, race and gender to the balance of power in relationships against a science fiction backdrop.

The pacing and prose made it easy to read this in a day, and was good enough for me to put Octavia Butler of my list of authors who I really should read more off.