A big gap in my science fiction reading is Octavia Butler, so I was happy to find a copy of Dawn on the Maryknolls borrow-leave bookshelves. I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting, but this wasn't it. Dawn is a somewhat old-fashioned science-fiction story—it has the feeling of those old '60s scifi stories where the idea somewhat squashes the characters. There's a lot of talk of people's emotions, but the people just felt a little flat to me. So I was surprised when I was looking it up for this post to discover that it's from 1987*.
The idea, though, is a big one. Humanity has nearly wiped itself out in a nuclear war and aliens have rescued scattered survivors. They're going to help humans repopulate the earth, but will we ever be the same? (Dun, dun, dun).
FuzzyCo grade: A
* I was also pleasantly surprised to see that it was the first of a trilogy, since it didn't have that chopped up feel of an obvious first book, one of my pet peeves.
