Title: Bloodchild
Author: Octavia E. Butler
Rating Out of 5: 3 (On the fence about this one)
My Bookshelves: Horror, Science fiction
Pace: Medium
Format: eBook, Novella
Year: 1984

Bloodchild was a seriously uncomfortable and awkward science fiction story. It made me seriously uncomfortable, but yet, I actually really enjoyed it at the same time. Something about this majorly uncomfortable story called to me, something about it made me not want to stop reading. Even while I was feeling really quite icky about the whole thing.

I found it really interesting the afterword by Butler at the end of this novella. All of my preconceptions that I developed during reading this were shattered. Where is thought of this as a bit of a coming of age tale, and a story that was about the imbalance of power, particularly within age-gap relationships. Butler stated that this was a bit of a love story. I just… still can’t get my head around that approach. But I loved learning the difference in perceptions and thinking deeply upon this.

There were so many nuances within this short novella. It might not have been my favourite story to read, but it definitely makes me intrigued to potentially read more of Butler’s stories in the future – it was just so wondrously layered and unexpected…

Image source: Moonshake Books