Parable of the Sower

The Parable of the Sower is a well written apocalyptic story. It brought The Road and Lucifer's Hammer to mind. At one point the protagonist and her small band of refugees trekked through Salinas California, home of John Steinbeck. It put me in mind of The Grapes of Wrath. What had happened to the people in this story was kind of like what happened to the Joads, though more violent. There was no giant meteor strike, no atomic war; every thing just went to hell.

My complaint about the book is that it has no climax. It is the first of a two-book series, or maybe the first half of a two book novel. I guess I'll have to read The Parable of the Talents to finish the story and reach its climax.

I had previously read Octavia Butler's Kindred. It involved traveling back in forth I time, but I felt that that was just a literary device to look at slavery from a modern post-slavery point of view. The Parable of the Sower, post-apocalyptic, is solidly in the sci-fi genre.