Ohhhh this is a much more likeable, immersive story. 'DAWN' was repellent for the benevolent genocides and mind-rapes of the Oankali, but this second book's treatment of the themes really let me read into more layered implications of such species alterations

The kidnapping made me a little sick to my stomach...

Second installment in the Lilith’s Brood series. I feel like 3.5 would be the most accurate rating here. Had some fantastic passages and that the concept carries through from the first book - but it took me a long time to adjust to the move away from Lilith as the main focus. She was such a compelling character, and - maybe it’s my own shortcoming - it just felt like a slog to read through hundreds of pages of a child trying to figure out its way.

I also don’t know know how much I loved the endpoint of them preparing for Mars. Mars feels too…real??…to be the destination when the Oankali are such fiction. I don’t know. It felt like a strange choice to me.

Still a good book, like the concept and universe of this trilogy. A little too long with a few too many expositions on Oankali anatomy, but I overall liked it. Not the same page turner as Dawn, but maybe the last one can finish it out strong.

(Second reading.) Some years have passed since the end of book one in this trilogy. The central character now is one of Lilith's children, Akin, a member of the first generation of hybrid humans, or constructs, that have come from deliberate and skillful genetic mixing by the aliens, the Oankali. His story begins with his birth, and it shows us how the old humans ("resisters") and new hybrid communities live on a regenerated Earth, in small communities separated from one another. As a construct child, Akin is conscious and reasoning at birth (and even before), so we experience his early years from his point of view (although in the third person). We learn what it's like to have a mixed Human-Oankali biology.

It's fascinating to jump forward in time this way and see so many things about the new civilization that were not part of book one. The tension between the resister villages and the villages of hybrids frequently escalates to violence. The resisters generally are bitter and resentful of the co-opting of humanity by the Oankali; rendered infertile, they seem unable to find meaning in life now that their basic survival needs have been met. A continued theme from book one is the human tendency toward anger, brutal attacks and destruction. Another continued theme is family relationships, with a more detailed experience of how a purely Oankali female-male pair and a purely Human female-male pair are joined through a third-sex Oankali individual called an ooloi.

We stay with Akin through his metamorphosis to adulthood. His adolescence is especially interesting because of his unique fascination with the resisters, who are this point are markedly different from the Humans who have become part of Oankali family groups.

This book is even better than the first one, and it was especially nice to read it immediately after finishing book one.