Yes. Butler's creativity as a writer is overrated.

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I just finished Parable of the Talents last week!

I actually thought that Talents humanized Lauren a little by showing us >!some of her daughter's and her brother's perspective, as incomplete as it was.!<

In the first book she felt a lot more like a Mary Sue because others' wariness of and frustration with her attitude didn't come up as much. She just magically seemed to know more about everything and be luckier and be more successful than everyone else in her endeavors. And she was never really punished for any of her character flaws. Which I guess it would be hard to portray in the first book anyway because it's all from her perspective.

In the second book though she could be said to be punished for her hubris. >!We get snatches of perspectives that validate this from other characters like Bankole, Marcus, and her daughter Asha/Larkin. They all express at various points that she should do or should have done things differently. From their perspectives it can be said that Lauren's dogged pursuit of her goals and refusal to listen to others resulted in Bankole's death, the loss of the community, and the estrangement of her only child.!<

But Lauren would never see things this way. She can’t see it that way because to doubt her judgement would be to doubt Earthseed. And to doubt Earthseed would be to doubt her whole life's purpose. Also from a narrative perspective, the death of Lauren's ideals would unpin the central idea of the books and the story would have to shift drastically to find a new center.

The fact that at the end of Talents we see >!the hurt and emptiness Lauren has created within her own biological family!< makes me think that Lauren is not a Mary-Sue and Butler was just trying to examine what a person who created a new religion might be like.

Wasn’t king walking on a small county road with no shoulder. I see this all the time and I think the people that do it are placing a lot of faith in the drivers of passing cars. Cars have to leave there lane to avoid hitting people. King should have taken some responsibility some of it.

The book isn't that long but it's honestly one of the most repetitive books Ive ever read. Specifically the part where the main character goes into the desert with the alchemist. Like I get it you gotta follow your personal destiny.

The possessive nature of Bankole worked for me in injecting unresolved tension. The big wet blanket I felt was the set-up of the cartoon-ish inhumanity of the horde outside of the gates, that seems to play on middle class fear of homeless people, and how in this world religion and not social reform is the one thing that save us. Couple that with a sci-fi device like the "hyper-empathy" that has no real function in the drama, and turning the protagonist into a remorseless killer half way through, it really was an absolute mess of a book imo!

I like it and I read a fair amount. It’s a short easy read that reminds me of Siddhartha in many ways. If anything it’s a Buddhist book and presents its philosophy as the simplest of all.

She is sort of a Mary Sue. The introduction of the version I read actually addressed this. I still liked Lauren though. I don't think it is necessarily unrealistic to have a narrator as intelligent and insightful as her, but I found the religion aspect of her worldview off-putting.

As far as Lauren goes, I can see why the students see her as a Mary Sue. She seems to have all the right answers most of the time, and I don’t think she was challenged enough. I think if the character (his name escapes me) who was very critical of her Earthseed ideas had pushed it a bit more and maybe even defected, it would have made the story and Lauren a bit more compelling. On her hyperempathy ability, I honestly kept forgetting she had it. I wanted to learn more about it and see it develop into more than just a problem Lauren/the group has to deal with as they travel/now defend their territory.

It was just ok Didn't see what all the hype was about.

I'm sure there's some BigLit editor who thinks the masses just aren't smart enough to get it, but s/he can go fuck themselves.

Yeah, I struggled through the first and DNF’ed the second.

I read Kindred a few months later and loved it. Haven’t read anything else by her yet.

I read the second one because I wanted to see what happened, or because I particularly cared about Lauren Nothing really happened to change my opinion of her in the sequel

Off topic from the original post, but I also just recently read it because of how highly praised it was on this sub, and I was a bit disappointed as well. It’s remarkably prescient and I love the world Butler created, but I had a problem with the lack of personality and nuance in the characters. Maybe the second one adds a bit more depth that really enhances the story, but I don’t think I’ll be tackling it soon at least.

My entire life, 90% of the literature I had to read in order to graduate high school was written by a white male.

Maybe it has something to do with that?

Or the fact that men don’t read books written by women, to a hilariously insane extent:

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/09/why-do-so-few-men-read-books-by-women

The vast majority of men I meet do not own a single book written by a woman of colour.

A man who actively reads may have a little poetry by Maya Angelou but it’s unlikely.

I can definitely see it, though I've only read Sower so my view's incomplete. There's some lip service paid by her dad early on about her needing to learn humility which def rings true, but I don't think much comes of that nor does it present much a problem, it kinda just gets softened when she acknowledges that she'll be trying to learn from everyone. Same with her mercenary nature when she Harry and Zara start their road trip, Harry's rightfully unnerved by how different she is from how she presented herself before, but then she just starts softening up. Thoigh to an extent she can kinda control her hyperempathy: if she's not looking at the hurt she doesn't have to feel it.

I think there's something of a wish fulfillment element in her; a lotta folks feel at times that things are gonna go bad and that they're among the few willing to acknowledge it, I reckon that part resonates strongly.

I dunno, I liked her. So often "good" characters in fiction end up willfully ignorant, and I find it refreshing when good is not soft or dumb, haha, which I felt she hit well. Plus she seemed humble in some ways to me, like deferring to Zara, confident in the stuff she could back up. And Earthseed resonated with me.

EDIT: I can also see her frankness as potentially coming across as abrasive, but I do also wonder if that and her confidence/arrogance would be seen as less unlikable in a male protagonist, haha. Gender can definitely be a factor in mary sue discourse/judgements.

I had the same feeling after looking up Dan Simmons. Made me sad. As for Orson Scott Card, it stopped me from actually buying/reading his work after Ender's Game.

I mean Cell was basically ranting and raving of a person who seems to hate cellphones and their users. The cell phone users punished and the technology luddites heros.

“Nothing to suggest this is a conscious ploy that gets any sort of payoff” is how I’d describe a lot of my feelings about the book — particularly Lauren’s relationship with Bankole. My students and I have been uncertain of how Butler wants us to perceive this relationship. Is it meant to be uncomfortable? Is it not? Big question marks

I agree on her being something of a Mary Sue, reading Sower I got the sense that she's an idealized version of the author herself. You could argue with the diary-style format that it's part of the main character's personality to exaggerate her insight and competence like a know-it-all teen might in her own journal. But there is nothing in the book to suggest that this is a conscious ploy that gets any sort of payoff.

I had countless issues with this book and only finished it because of how it keeps coming up in this forum.

I actually listened to the audio book version, so I might be biased as to how it was presented by the Author as he reads it.

Can confirm that Dopamine Nation was an exquisite read! Highly recommend!

Can confirm that Dopamine Nation was an exquisite read! Highly recommend!

It's fine, don't think it's mind blowing but don't think it's the worst piece of shit ever like some people think.

I don't understand why it's so polarizing lol

yes Dr Sleep is such a good book about recovery, and I love the parallels at the start of the book where it says ‘FEAR stands for fuck everything and run’ and at the end when it says ‘FEAR stands for face everything and recover’

I absolutely love his insights into human nature. I've been a life long Stephen King fan even though I have serious reservations due to a) his low key misogyny and b) weird writing quirks (Frederika Bimmel bugs me *every time I read that) but his world building is beyond compare.

I didn't enjoy The Shining, but Dr Sleep is my favorite, with Duma Key a close second. Both deal with recovery and 'mundane' mortality that reflect his personal experience in a down to earth manner.