Parable of the Talents

Not as smooth as the previous Parable of the Sower, Butler is a little too in love with her cast of characters and the Acorn settlement to move the story forward, burdening the tale with occasional stuck-in-the-mud moments of bogged-down, stagnant plot. Getting on with it is a good thing, and each time she does, the story is wrenching and compelling... only to get stuck again, but stick with it. Not sure how I feel about Butler's narrative voice decision of a sullen long-lost daughter, who seems to only be there to cast unreliability on Lauren Oya Olamina's own prideful journals, but surely that would be more convincingly if done more subtly. It makes me wonder if Butler made this choice when she noticed early fans of THE SOWER exalting Lauren's status as their own kind of messiah.