Fledgling

Fledgling (2005) is Octavia E. Butler’s last published book before her untimely death in 2006. It is, unfortunately, the last book-length writing of hers that I had left to read–I was saving it for a while, but after reading the amazing biography Positive Obsession I decided that it was time.

In Positive Obsession, Morris warns that a lot of Fledgling may be seen as problematic, as the main character (and whose point of view we have) is Shori – who appears to be a black human child of 11 or 12, but who is actually a 53-year young vampire, a genetically modified member of the Ina, a vampiric race that lives several hundred human years and lives in symbiosis with humans, whose blood the Ina need to survive, and most of the symbiotic relationships also have a sexual component.

Shori wakes in a cave with no memories of who or where she is, knowing she has been injured and feeling a tremendous hunger. She feeds, first on a human who happens to be there when she wakes up, killing him. That sates her for a while, and she then goes to find deer in the forest. Near the cave where she awakened, is a settlement that has been burned to the ground, but she has no memory of what happened. After she ventures away from there, a young man named Wright finds her walking alone on a backwoods road in the dark. Thinking she is a child, he tries to take her to safety back to his trailer behind his family’s house.

Shori remembers more and more, and Wright becomes her first symbiont. He does express discomfort with her childlike appearance, but as she remembers, she assures him that sex between them is OK, despite its appearance. She meets her father, and finds out that she is the sole survivor of her family who lived in the settlement–her mother, aunts, sisters, and all of their symbionts (most adult Ina have at least eight symbionts). She also finds out that she is an experiment–her family had been genetically engineering a daywalker– an Ina who could be awake and alert during the day, using DNA from dark-skinned humans.

The story shifts to Shori trying to find out who killed her family — and she and her symbionts have to run for their lives as well. They do find safe harbor with another Ina family, and she learns more about Ina culture and norms with symbionts–the humans who have chosen to live with Ina and provide them with the blood that Ina need to survive. Shori solves the mystery, which is followed by an Ina trial of the guilty parties.

It’s all fascinating, and once it’s clear that Shori is not actually a child, and, in fact, holds most of the power in her symbiotic relationships (she is super-strong, super-fast, can see in the dark, and can easily kill a human with her bare hands), the story isn’t as creepy. But Ina can essentially hypnotize people they have bitten, and once an Ina has drank from them enough times, the symbionts would die if they are separated, so ethical Ina make sure their potential symbionts have the power of choice before crossing the line such that they can’t leave.

I was completely enthralled and couldn’t stop listening–reading Fledgling made me grieve Butler’s death all over again. She was such a master–combining a vampire novel with social criticism, a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of power dynamics.

It was also weight-neutral, no negative descriptions of large or fat people. The Ina are described typically as tall, thin, and pale, and there is some preference among the Ina for robust symbionts, as humans who are too small will likely suffer health issues from the regular feeding their Ina will do.