Abandoned by Booklikes

Well this one didn't work for me at all. The only saving grace is that it was short. I loved/liked Octavia Butler's other books and this one just made my skin crawl. Reading about almost immortal beings named Anyanwu and Doro through 288 pages of their dysfunction was a little much for me honestly.

When Doro comes across Anyanwu (Sun Woman) he is happy to finally meet someone that he thinks can help him with his quest to breed the perfect children. Though Anyanwu is hesitant to be with Doro, she decided that she is tired of being alone more and watching her descendants die along with her husbands. Too late she realizes that Doro is a cruel being who doesn't care about people at all except to make sure that they do his bidding in all things.

They travel from Africa to the New World (America) and are able to change their bodies, color of their skin, and even their sex. I wish that Butler had these two stay African and have to deal with the problems their skin color would have living in the Americas, but that is quickly skated over by people saying how afraid of Doro they are and Doro and his villages are quickly left alone.

I also felt frustrated by Anyanwu since she is really just Doro's doormat. She keeps making all these concessions thinking it is going to keep her children safe and nothing she is doing does that. Doro is cruel and has caused her pain over and over again and she is in a love/hate relationship with him. I thought it was gross how Doro was forcing Anywanwu to breed with who he said since he wanted children off of her. I kept hoping someone would kill Doro.

The writing was good, I just lost interest in it after a while. This is not another Xenogenesis series where you can see the debates about consent going back and forth and gray areas. There is just simply Doro being awful and getting away with it for centuries. 

The flow as upside down too though. Nothing goes on forever it seems besides reading about how Doro is trying to breed people and then we come to an end which I assume sets up the next book in the series. I plan on skipping that.