Rick Riordan's Reviews > Parable of the Sower

I am embarrassed to say I had never read Octavia Butler before. I’m happy I finally corrected this glaring oversight. This novel set in the near future is so frighteningly prescient it is difficult to read. The year is 2026. American society is rapidly breaking down thanks to global warning, economic stagnation and wealth disparity. 18-year-old Lauren Olamina lives with her family in a walled-off middle class neighborhood outside LA, but she knows that their little island of relative safety will not last. No one can leave the compound without risking their lives. People are desperate and bereft of any hope. Police and fire fighters only come to help if you have the money to pay them, and even then they are more likely to arrest you than assist you. Few jobs pay money. Most people are slipping into de facto slavery as servants to the wealthy or employees in company-run towns. The new president promises to “Make America Great Again,” — sound familiar? — but does so by eliminating the space program and loosening all labor protections, which only gives large corporations a freer hand in cutting up the carcass of the United States.

Lauren is born with a dangerous condition, hyper-empathy, which means she feels whatever pain she witnesses inflicted on others. When her neighborhood is finally breached and she is forced out into the harsh new world, this empathy is only one of her great challenges. Lauren has an idea for a new kind of society — a new religion that will teach self-sufficiency and a new understanding of what God is — but to realize her dream, she first has to stay alive and learn who she can trust.

This book was written in the 90s. The scary thing is — the 2026 Butler imagined twenty years ago could easily happen within ten years. Reading this book, I felt a growing sense of claustrophobia, as if I were already trapped in Butler’s disintegrating vision of America. It is a haunting, powerful read, but not for the faint of heart.