Sower by Octavia E Butler

A Science Fiction, 1993 by Grand Central Publishing, 345 Pages

What I Didn’t Like:

This book blends a dystopian alternate reality (future when it was written haha) with religion. I found the religious element to be too heavy handed. It encompasses too much of the page time and too much of the brain space for the narrator.
Slower than I was expecting. Partially this is the diary style format, which allows the narrator to sort of mind wander.
I wanted a bit more from the empath abilities. It could’ve been explored more and played with more. The second half utilized it better than the first, but still not as much as I wanted.

This book takes a slow walk through the day to day life during an apocalypse. Its beauty is in its simplicity. Daily life is something we can understand and relate to.
Considerations are made for all sorts of things you’d wonder about in this sort of future. Food, water, thievery, cheating, etc. I appreciated the details.
It’s fascinating, as with many dystopian novels, how much time has not changed things. The author based this one on an alternate reality they saw a risk for back in the early 1990s and yet, even as we reach the timeline she was writing about, these mistakes could still happen and lead us to a collapse. In other words, this future is terrifyingly possible.

Fans of diary style stories.
Readers who want a sort of post apocalypse story that gives consideration to details and takes its time with the characters.