God is change.Thus is presented Octavia Butler’s brilliant and brutally powerful 1998 Earthseed novel Parable of the Talents.Taking its title from the Biblical parable from St. Matthew, Butler describes a near future dystopian American society that has been decimated by apocalypse, The Pox, and is unraveling along socio-economic and theological lines.Religion as powerSome religious critics will see this novel as an attack on religious fundamentalism, most specifically Christian extremism, as hor...

How was this written in the 90’s? If this was written last year, I would have thought it was a little too on the nose. It helps to know that Parable Of The Sower and Parable Of The Talents were originally meant as one book. They’re so good. Really easy to read, journalistic and conversational. I liked the commentary by the new character preceding entries in this book, that oppositional voice widened the scope of the story so much. Earthseed is timeless wisdom, though personally Acorn made more s...

This book is even harder to read than the first one was, but it's difficult to go into why without being a festival of spoilers. So I'll just say a few things -- I noticed some people complaining in their reviews of Parable of the Sower that while Butler did go into some of the ways that minorities are hit harder during difficult times, she didn't go into much into how they fall harder on women. (But wait a second, really? Not with the two sisters who are prostituted by their own father? Not wit...

Recommended reading at the date of this review publishing.President Jarret's slogan in this book is "Make America Great Again" and you read that within 30 pages of the opening. Ring the alarm.

Everyone should read this book in 2017 and be disturbed by how realistic it could be. I think it's more realistic than Handmaid's Tale, It Can't Happen Here, and 1984 combined.

The Bible's Parable of the Sower talks about seeds. Seeds need to fall on good earth in order to grow into majestic trees. Butler's Parable of the Sower told a similar tale: The seeds of a new religion need to find fertile minds.The Bible's Parable of the Talents talks about talents that get buried in earth. These hidden talents don't grow but become pointless and represent a significant waste. Butler's Parable of the Talents told a seemingly totally unrelated tale."Parable of the Talents" conti...

This book was a mind blower. I liked it how at the end of the story the scripture of “The Parable of Talents”, Matthew 25:14-30, was printed.But mostly this book makes you think of how the world is today. Some of Butler’s fiction is turning into a reality. And what is especially unnerving, is that she wrote this in 1998. There is hope throughout the story, and hope is sometimes the one thing that gets us through.

Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents has a familiar sense of urgency that drove both Kindred and Clay's Ark. Like Mind of My Mind, Parable of the Talents features a strong-willed woman as visionary and shaper of a future world. Most of the tale is told through EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING---a compilation of the journal writings of Lauren Oya Olamina, a hyperempath who is married to a physician known as Bankole, who happens to be 39 years her senior. But there are other tellers as well:

4.5 starsAn excellent sequel which provides the continuation of and conclusion to the story begun in Parable of the Sower. For this reason, I definitely recommend reading both. If you enjoyed one, you will equally appreciate the other.Interesting that in this book, published back in 1998, the campaign slogan of the fascist neo-Christian right-wing Presidential candidate is "help make America great again."

Much More Than Sci-FiNeither Amazon nor the Library of Congress has a classification in which The Parable of the Talents fits easily. So it typically gets dumped into science fiction by default. But while the book does take place in the future, and extrapolates some of the possible consequences of things like climate change and computer-controlled weaponry, there is nothing unrecognisable as probably existing on somebody's drawing board, somewhere. There is certainly no typical sci-fi bending of...

There are times when I wish I believed in hell-other than the hells we make for one another, I mean.These are tough books to review, and I'll just use this space to talk about both of them.Butler unflinchingly looks at the effect the steady deterioration of society would have on women, people of color, and the economically marginalized- I love this.She also has a strong female character making her way through this world in a believable way- I love this too.This black woman slowly gathers a band

The Handmaid's Tale is the Disney version of this book. Parable of the Talents is the scariest book ever.

Grim, bleak, and intellectual read about the near future. This is my first Octavia Butler book and I enjoyed her simple & elegant writing style. This particular novel is a dystopian story that, sadly, feels prescient. Christian America finally gets a candidate into the oval office and the consequences are terrifying. The US heads to war with Canada and Alaska who have both dared to secede. Citizens who are not good Christians, poor, or homeless are prey to Crusaders and their reeducation camps (...

“In order to riseFrom its own ashesA phoenixFirstMustBurn.” Loved Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler's second installment in the Earthseed series! I really enjoyed Parable of the Sower, but Parable of the Talents is more forward-looking, philosophical and aspirational in the face of the continued collapse of society. In this 1998 novel, Butler is eerily prescient about the breakdown of society and the kinds of voices we will listen to when we are living in fear. The 2024 presidential candida...

It's still wild to me that this was written in the 90's because in many ways it feels prophetic. I'm not sure if this book would have hit the same way for me if I had read it at a different time in my life. But reading it as a parent in her mid-30's, deconstructing from American evangelical Christianity, seeing in real time the effects of climate change and the Trump administration, this narrative struck me in a way I didn't expect and I will probably be thinking about it for awhile. While the e...

third read - 16 December 2021 - ****. I re-read both of Octavia Butler’s Earthseed novels (Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents), because they are covered in Lecture 19, “Octavia Butler and Utopian Hybridity”, from Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature. In this novel, the utopian community of Acorn proposed in the first volume is created and subsequently destroyed from the outside. But then the process theology of Earthseed is rebuilt as a religious movement within society at l...

This is the second instalment in the Earthseed duology. This follows the same protagonist, Lauren, although the time period has shifted forward a few years, from the first book. This primarily follows the same diary-style format, although there are additional small inclusions from other characters. It also deals with primarily the same topics of focusing on the societal and political alterations in an anarchy-ruled dystopian, and the instalment and a creation of a new religion to alleviate the d...

“We learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger”The above passage is the essence of what Octavia Butler wanted to communicate with...

4 and a half stars.I did not want to wait too long between my reading of “Parable of the Sower” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and the sequel, “Parable of the Talents”. The first book has a great momentum that made me very eager to find out the rest of Lauren’s story – even if the setting felt uncomfortably realistic.The manipulation of religion for the benefit of political advancement is something that has always been a huge problem for me, and when good speculative writers toy with...

I think both this and its predecessor Parable of the Sower are particularly relevant reads at this time. This one is superior to the first, in my opinion. It did a lot to make me feel absolutely terrible, but I do mean that in a positive way.RTC.