She did not own herself any longer. Even her flesh could be cut and stitched without her consent or knowledge.
Dawn by Octavia E. Butler
Table of Contents
Why Dawn?
I picked up Dawn on a deep discount on the Kobo ebook store in January 2026 along with a couple of other books. I’ve been keeping an eye on Kobo ebook store sales for the past few months as it is a good way to buy books I want to read for very cheap and putting them in my ebook library for later. I am trying to always have a book available to read.
This book will be my second Octavia E. Butler book, I had previously read Parable of the Sower many years ago. I don’t remember much about that book other than it being post-apocalyptic dystopian fiction. I figured reading another Octavia E. Butler book for Black History Month was a good idea so here we are. This will be the third book in my Black History Month mini-challenge, the first being Lost Ark Dreaming and the second being A Song of Legends Lost.
Furthermore, since this is a science fiction novel and I thought it would be a good change of pace from the epic fantasy of the previous book. This also happens to be the first book I read in ebook format this year! I have been going hard on reading physical copies of books from the library so reading a ebook after months of reading physical books feels novel once more.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
Like with Parable of the Sower, Dawn takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. In this case however, Octavia E. Butler writes a science fiction story far into the future. This book takes place hundreds of years after humans have mostly wiped each other out in a nuclear holocaust.
A very small amount of humans were rescued from this apocalypse by the Oankali, a space faring alien species who survive by genetically merging with primitive species like humans. The Oankali kept the remaining in a form of stasis on and off for hundreds of years on their space ship while they learned more about us, repaired the radioactive desolation of Earth and most importantly merged genes with us to create a new kind of human-Oankali hybrid.
This is what our main character Lilith Iyapo wakes up into at the beginning of the book. From the very beginning there is this profound sense of fear, a fear of the unknown. There is also loneliness and grief, both over the loss of Lilith’s husband and son which she is still mourning but also grief for the world she has lost as she wakes up into a world alien in more ways than one.
The book is written entirely from the perspective of Lilith as she interacts with her Oankali minders and tries to understand their customs, language and ways of being. The Oankali are truly alien. Octavia E. Butler doesn’t shy away from depicting aliens as something truly different from humans and how difficult that would be for a human to come to terms with. L
Most of Dawn is Lilith’s explorations of this world, her persistent efforts to understand as much about the Oankali as possible. Her questioning of the loss of bodily autonomy that the Oankali have imposed on the surviving humans. The genetic modifications and merging that enhance humans but also make them something different, something not quite human. I think this is the book’s attempt at exploring the topic of eugenics using the framing of a supposedly benevolent alien species performing the gene modifications for the betterment of humanity.
I am still not quite sure I think of the book itself. Sure, at its core its very competently written. Octavia E. Butler is a very good writer and that much is very much on display here. But how do I feel about the story itself? About Lilith and other characters, both alien and human? I am not quite sure I care for any of the characters and I don’t think I am meant to.
The word I keep coming back to is: abstract. I think this is one of those stories where the characters are vehicles for exploring abstract concepts rather than full characters of their own. I am generally not a huge fan of such stories. However, in this case, I think the book is thought provoking enough to override my dislike for such stories.
At its core, I think the questions that Dawn‘s story is asking are something that a lot of good science fiction asks. What does it mean to be human? If humans take on some qualities of an alien species through genetic merging are they still human? What even is an alien? How much of human behaviour is nature vs. nurture? The book is content to leave these questions unanswered and this state of ponderous mystery works in the book’s favour.
Concluding Thoughts
Dawn is the first book in the Xenogenesis trilogy. Perhaps the second and third books attempt answers to the big questions asked in the first book or perhaps it continues to ask other big questions and continues being thought provoking science fiction. I don’t think I will find out for myself. I am not planning on continuing reading this series, at least not anytime soon.
I had a reasonably good time reading this book and would definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in reading science fiction. Especially science fiction that is unafraid to get really fucking weird with its world and its aliens. This book is weird and I fully mean that to be a compliment.
That is all from me, see y’all in the next one.
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