Dawn by Octavia E. ButlerMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
In contrast to the Patternmaster series (and certainly also the Earthseed books), this falls into the category of what I would call more generic science-fiction. That isn't a criticism, but reading this made me realize that I'm less drawn in by aliens vs. humans than her books that bring in more socio-political commentary or dystopia. (I make an exception for Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary which is my favorite book that features an alien. Blame the fact that I'm of the E.T. generation, I guess.)
In Dawn, there's little in the way of world-building, but a lot of species-building (one might guess, with the name of the series). Lilith is an interesting character, but I found her hard to place because she is both an observer of humanity and an actor of humanity. Butler doesn't give us a lot of time to adjust to the other human characters in the book, so I had trouble feeling much toward them other than viewing them as archetypes of different foibles. Maybe that was the point.
Did I enjoy it enough to read the rest of the trilogy? Maybe, but those will go on the back-burner "to read" list.
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