Fledgling (2005)
Written by Octavia E. Butler
Narrated by: Tracey Leigh
Genre: Science Fantasy
Length: 12h, 17m (Audiobook)
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Why I Chose This: In a post in 2017, I listed out several of the (many, many, many) books on my To Be Read pile. I’d never read Octavia Butler before and had been wanting to and figured that a vampire novel would be a good jumping off point. So here I am!
Interestingly enough, though, I read a different Butler book prior to this one. I may have forgotten the name of the book and found one called Kindred, which I assumed (very wrongly) was about vampires. It was a great book in and of itself, and I was glad to have listened to it, though I admit to being pretty confused for a few chapters until I realized it wasn’t the book I’d meant to read. Ha!
If you’re interested in Kindred, Sharon Patry has a very good write-up on it in this Speculative Chic post.
The premise of the actual book I meant to read, Fledgling:
This is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly unhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted-and still wants-to destroy her and those she cares for and how she can save herself.
There will be some spoilers in this post. Not so much of the plot, but of the characters and the culture. I’ll also be talking about some adult concepts, so please keep that in mind as well.
I’m a big fan of not-vampire stories. I mean, I’m a fan of vampire stories too, but I tend to like books about creatures that seem to be a thing but aren’t. I like them so much that I’ve written two my own. One is a zombie book with not-zombies and another is a vampire book with not-vampires (that one will be out later this year). So this premise really appealed to me.
That said, this book squicked me out a little bit.
When we meet Shori, she is waking up from blackness, with no memory of who she is, where she is, or what happened to her. Over the course of the beginning of the story, once she is actively healing, we learn that her body is that of a ten year old girl. Her character didn’t seem like a ten year old, so I had thoughts of “older” Claudia from Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire, a grown woman trapped in a child’s body.
When Shori begins to walk along a road, alone and in the rain, a pick up truck stops and a man, Wright, who is perhaps in his late twenties, picks her up. This is where she discovers her bite and the power it can have over humans. Wright takes Shori home with the intention of bringing her to thee authorities the next day, but ultimately he does not. Instead, he finds himself connected to her and, over time, becomes her symbiont (more on this later).
Shori is not a ten year old girl, but a 53 year old Ina, which is a separate species from humans. So when she and Wright have sex, it’s not sex between an adult man and a child, but between two adults of separate species.
While I understood this intellectually, it still squicked me out. But I also recognize this as a knee-jerk reaction. In modern American culture, we’re repressed to the point that everything is hypersexualized. In this culture, any overt attention given to a child is seen as sexual in nature, even if it isn’t. All strangers are pedophiles unless proved otherwise.
So it’s from this psychological baseline that my reaction about Shori and Wright comes. It is a good opportunity to look more closely at my cultural learning and interrogate my own feelings. The Ina, because they are so long-lived, physically age more slowly. Shori is over fifty years old, yet I still struggled with the sexuality in relation to the body with which she moves through the world and the age it appears versus the age it is. This is a statement about perception versus reality that can be applied to our western culture in a number of ways.
Shori is also black, genetically engineered to have advantages that white/pale Ina do not.
When I was a kid — well, when I was being a whiny kid and complaining about something hurting (not actually having any real problems, just attention-seeking and whiny), my mom would pinch my leg. When I’d yell, “Ow!” she would just say, “Now your X doesn’t hurt anymore.” Butler tackles the subject of racial prejudice and hatred within the Ina society and I wonder if casting Shori in a child’s body isn’t the pinch in the leg so that the real message — acceptance — would be more easily palatable. Or less noticeably uncomfortable.
Shori faces prejudice not just for the color of her skin, but for the fact that she was genetically planned in order to get around the extreme sensitivity to the sun that is a trait of Ina people. And it works. She can tolerate the sun better than her white counterparts and she does not have the overwhelming urge to sleep during the day. This proves key when daytime attacks are carried out on the places where she seeks shelter.
Surprisingly, the second half of the book is more a courtroom drama than an adventure/survival tale. The Ina assemble to get to the bottom of the murders of Shori’s family and we get hints and information along the way. The rules and traditions of the Ina are pretty fascinating to read if you’re interested in anthropological topics at all.
The Ina are different from traditional folklore vampires in a lot of ways, but the biggest one is that they do not hunt humans, even though they must take their sustenance from them. Instead, most Ina engage humans who want to be with them and create a symbiotic relationship with them. Indeed, the names for these human companions and caretakers are “symbionts.” Most Ina require multiple symbionts to nourish them without negatively affecting any individual symbiont.
Shori herself cares deeply for her symbionts (Wright becomes her first) and most of the Ina who are compassionate are the same. Having a household with multiple partners flies directly in the face of the monogamy script that western culture clings to as the only way to “correctly” do relationships. Another exploration of cultural scripting taken on in this book that would normally be commented on and often ripped apart, but that doesn’t even seem to be commented on in reviews. The age of Shori was a very effective pinch in the leg, it seems.
In Conclusion: I believe that people who like to think about cultural scripting and interrogate their own understanding of the world will find this a very interesting read on many levels. Some aspects will likely be disturbing, but I found Shori’s character to be very well-grounded and rational and found the Ina world to be fascinating and engaging.
I would definitely recommend Fledgling as a thought-provoking read.
I remember reading this for Shara’s book club years ago. I wasn’t quite as jazzed with it. Mostly because the ending bits pissed me off. I ended up posting about it http://abooksellerblog.blogspot.com/search?q=fledgling but to sum up, I liked Shori a lot and the concept surrounding her. But the Council of Judgement sucked at their jobs and the verdict made me angry.
Sorry for the delayed response. I was at a con this weekend 🙂
Yes, the ending could have been better. It was a bit of a weird book structurally, too, because the first half was an action/thriller and the second half was basically a courtroom drama. So it was strange. but I still enjoyed the book overall. I feel like her decisions about the character of Shori made for a very revealing look at how we, in the US especially, look at children, sexuality, etc.