Like many people, I was introduced to the work of Octavia E. Butler with Kindred, an entry-point that’s immensely difficult to top. I’d heard good things about the Xenogenesis series, but the description sounded a hair too squicky for my taste, and so it put it off. But after reading (and loving) both Clay’s Ark and “Bloodchild,” I figured I could trust Butler to write compelling stories while trying to make the reader uncomfortable, and so I decided to finally give Dawn a try.
Dawn opens with a widowed Black woman waking up in a mostly featureless room from which she cannot escape. Periodically, a voice asks her questions, and sometimes she answers. It doesn’t take long to realize that she has been rescued from a dying Earth by a race of aliens with big plans for humanity. If she is to survive, she must get used to living with them. And if she is to return to restore the Earth, she has to convince other humans to do the same.
In my experience reading Butler, she almost always tries to make the reader uncomfortable, particularly in the exploration of vastly imbalanced power dynamics. Dawn is no exception, though I found the discomfort quite a bit less visceral than in either Clay’s Ark or “Bloodchild.” The characters certainly feel plenty of revulsion for their strange, tentacled captors, but I found the descriptions to be far less revolting from a reader perspective, and the extraordinary patience shown by the aliens in the acclimatization process makes for less momentary terror and more like the proverbial frog in boiling water. The themes are no less sharp, but the execution leads to a story that’s much more meditative than action-packed.
Like in so many of Butler’s works, there’s no clear right answer on how to handle the situation. Her leads frequently find themselves utterly powerless, with few options other than futile resistance or total capitulation. Dawn sees the lead toy with both ideas, along with trying to thread the needle for a middle-ground response that may not even exist. Is her path the right one? That’s for the reader to judge! The narrative certainly brings out her reasoning clearly enough to make her position sympathetic, but it remains silent on whether or not her ultimate choice is best, or what would even constitute an optimal path forward. I am intrigued to see how the question develops in subsequent books, but I’d be quite surprised to see anything resembling a definitive answer.
The back half of the story features a lot of intra-human conflict that recreates the lead’s decision points on a larger scale. For me, the dealing with other humans story isn’t quite as gripping as the dealing with aliens story, but it does provide some plot-related tension and forces the lead to accelerate some uncomfortable decisions on just where she stands on the subject of their alien overlords.
On the whole, Dawn doesn’t have the visceral conflict that so thoroughly engages the emotions in some of Butler’s other work, but it still makes for a fascinating meditation on power imbalances in the context of a first contact tale. It’s not an intense page-turner, but it’s engaging from the start, and it’s left me eager to explore the sequels.
Recommended if you like: first contact, exploration of power imbalance.
Can I use it for Bingo? It’s hard mode for First Contact, Politics, and Unusual Transportation. It’s also written by an Author of Color.
Overall rating: 16 of Tar Vol’s 20. Four stars on Goodreads.