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    Parable of the Talents
    Parable of the Talents
    Parable of the Talents
    Audiobook15 hours

    Parable of the Talents

    Written by Octavia E. Butler

    Narrated by Patricia R. Floyd, Sisi Aisha Johnson and Peter Jay Fernandez

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Best-selling author Octavia E. Butler's acclaimed novels have won numerous awards, and she is a recipient of a "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Parable of the Talents was selected as one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly. Environmental devastation and economic chaos have turned America into a land of horrifying depravity. Assault, theft, sexual abuse, slavery, and murder are commonplace. Taking advantage of the situation, a zealous, bigoted tyrant wins his way into the White House. Directly opposed is Lauren Olamina, founder of Earthseed--a new faith that teaches "God Is Change." Persecuted for "heathen" beliefs as much as for having a black female leader, Earthseed's followers face a life-and-death struggle to preserve their vision. Butler's fluid writing and keen observations about race, gender, politics, and religion make for a moving parable that will be pondered for generations. A powerful reading from three standout narrators captures the multi-generational sweep of this poignant tale.

    Editor's Note

    Book club pick…

    Singer Kehlani selected one of rapper Noname’s book club picks for November, and she chose “Parable of the Talents,” the sequel to Octavia Butler’s lauded dystopian, “Parable of the Sower.” Written in the 1990s, this novel about a world severely altered by climate change is still incredibly prescient.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateSep 12, 2007
    ISBN9781449801311
    Parable of the Talents
    Author

    Octavia E. Butler

    Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) was a renowned African American author of several award-winning novels, including Parable of the Sower, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1993, and Parable of the Talents, winner of the Nebula Award for the best science fiction novel in 1995. She received a MacArthur Genius Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work and was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future.

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    Reviews for Parable of the Talents

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    974 ratings54 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Beautiful! Simply Beautiful! I enjoyed this much more than parable of the sower! I enjoyed the journey!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I liked this sequel better than the first one!!
      It is difficult to read in some parts of violence and hate, but I have no problems seeing humans capable of those horrific acts, specially of the selfishness of survival.
      Lauren's daughter is introduced and I am not so sure I would like her. She is still a super smart and sensible woman.
      That uncle Mark... not my favorite at all.
      Olamina is complicated and strong. Not sure if I would like her as a mother.
      Now... Maybe the Trump administration got some tricks from Jarret Donner, but seeing the America great again slogan to mean discrimination, violent and hate from a book that is almost 20 years older than his campaign made me think the horrible things he would like to do.

      All in all, a very good book!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      a harrowing, thought provoking experience. I like that the ideas of religion were discussed from all angles and the reader is allowed to make up their own mind about them. Even when the novel discusses literal preaching, the story itself doesn't feel preachy.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Wow, I couldn't stop listening. This book has a way of drawing you in. Written in a format which tells the story from a 1st person account. This is a continuation from the first book and the many struggles Lauren has yet to navigate through to overcome. At times the book left me feeling like there was no hope as it was another bad thing after another but through shared experiences things start to come together, just when hope is lost

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Octavia Butler makes her characters so real that you feel as if you know them.
      The description of time and setting in so realistic. I think Octavia must have had a prophetic view of the future because so much of what she wrote reall projected the future. She wrote in 1993 and I'm reading this in 2021. Unbelievable!!!??

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Excellent narrators. The three voices really brought it to life!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      A worthy sequel to the Parable of the Sower, full of human insight and hopefulness
    • 5/5
      It's just fascinating how, on point, Butler was with her description of the political influences on society & of course climate change. Loved, the varied perspectives and found this a satisfying conclusion to the two part series.
    • 5/5
      This book was such a great listen! The Earthseed series was the first book I read by Octavia Butler, and her way of writing and storytelling is transformative! I enjoyed the story, while also reflecting on my own life, society and the problems we are facing. Would give it 10 stars if possible!
    • 5/5
      I have so many thoughts about this book. I have mixed emotions as well. On one hand, I liked the struggle and the realistic outcomes of some of the characters in this story. On the other hand, I rooted for the reunion with the person Lauren longed to be reunited with, but I was disappointed and saddened by how that storyline played out. I really didn’t like how her family turned their back on Lauren after all she did for them but I also understand the possibility of that being a real outcome. Overall, this book was a great sequel to ‘Parable of the Sower’ but prepare yourself of outcomes you may not want or even expect. Brace yourself to shed a few tears as well.
    • 2/5
      The book itself is VERY, VERY GOOD. But the audiobook is NOT GOOD and actively takes away and miscolors the narrative. Whoever does the voice for Larkin has the most cringe-inducing dripping-with-venom evil snake voice. It’s literally impossible to listen to her voice and *not* hate her, which I really think goes against the common experience with the text alone. If you’re interested in this title, I strongly recommend reading the text itself and skipping the audio.
    • 5/5
      This book was so good. I love the narration and the story itself.
    • 4/5
      Another good story though they one was not as captivating as the first somehow... I felt like I never wore got to know the characters
    • 5/5
      Powerful

      Powerful, and heartbreaking.

      Also amazingly prescient. Butler died 10 years before Trump was elected but here he is in all his Christo-fascist glory.
    • 5/5
      Shit, y'all got to read this. Written twenty? or so years ago and SPOT ON political precognition. The populist demagogue running for president has a slogan you'd recognize. Once in power (that's not a spoiler), he institutes a child separation program tearing babies from the arms of nursing mothers. The parallels are amazing and chilling.

      That's not the story though. The story is big, practically multi-generational, and you know what? I bet Jemisin was really strongly inspired by this series (duology?) I see so many threads, moods, plot devices mirrored between this and the Broken Earth trilogy. And it's great.
    • 3/5
      Sequel, not as personally enthralling as Parable of the Sower but still very good. Having her granddaughter's commentary interspersed, while adding some missing elements of Lauren's life, was somewhat interruptive. And with the reiteration that the true purpose of Earthseed was to leave the earth, this novel loses its power as a model to reform our society on earth.Reviewed over a month from reading, I can't provide more reaction. Donating to a Little Free Library--not powerful enough to keep in my collection, but may inspire others.
    • 4/5
      Another excellent book by Butler. But this one was so painful in many places that I almost stopped reading a couple of times.
    • 2/5
      diverse fiction (part 2 of 2-part series--slavery, classism, politics/religion, other issues in futuristic dystopian 2020s-2035-2090s America).

      Continues the story of the main character as she searches for her abducted daughter and in building/rebuilding Earthseed.

      I think I would recommend just reading the first one as a stand-alone. This one was still good, but I just thought the first one was way better in terms of pacing, as this one necessarily had long stretches of time where little happened as characters aged and continued in pursuit of long-ranging goals. You may still decide you want to know what happens to the characters after reading the first one, but the first book does end satisfactorily enough.
    • 4/5
      Parable of the Talents picks up where Parable of the Sowers ends. Lauren Oya Olamina has created her first Earthseed community and is continuing to take in those in need. She is considering next steps in spreading her Earthseed vision when Texas Senator Andrew Steele Jarret is elected president. He is the head of the Christian America movement and his ultraconservative platform of ″Make America Great Again″ resonated with the evangelical right. Once in office, his supporters receive tacit support for vigilante violence. Immigrants, non-Christians, the poor, and women are all targeted by Jarret Crusaders wearing uniforms reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan. Labeled a heathen cult, Lauren′s Earthseed community is in the cross-hairs.In Parable of the Sowers Olivia Butler created a world that seemed a mere step away from our own: corrupt cops, climate change, walled communities for those who could afford it, homelessness and violence for those who couldn't. In Parable of the Talents, that world felt even closer. Despite having been published in 1998, the election of an ultraconservative president who promised security and stability at the cost of individual rights was scarily prescient. That Jarret uses the slogan ″Make America Great Again″ made it impossible for me to think of the fictitious president without thinking of the all too real one. Certainly readers in 2021 will have a completely different reading experience than those who read it in 1998.In Talents, one of the themes that is explored in more detail is how a single charismatic leader can ignite a religious movement. Lauren Olamina starts writing down "truths" as a teenager and in Sowers gathers enough followers to start a community. In Talents she has to abandon her plan of creating a network of communities and envision a new way of spreading the Earthseed doctrine. I found the initial descriptions of God is Change to be compelling, but felt by the end of Talents that Butler was struggling to write the religious "excerpts."A major change between the two books is the shift from a single first person narrative to multiple. Talents is narrated by Lauren's daughter, but the majority of the book is told in Lauren's voice through journal entries, a technique familiar to readers from Sowers. Excerpts from writings by Lauren's daughter's father and uncle are also included when needed to provide additional perspective. It sounds confusing, but it works well and flows smoothly.Once again, Butler impresses with her crisp writing, well-developed characters, and matter-of-fact tone. Originally intended to be one book, the Parable books are best read back to back. At the time of her death, the author intended to write a third and final installation in the series, but the two books stand on their own. I didn't feel as though the reader was left hanging. I would highly recommend the Parable books for anyone who enjoyed The Handmaid′s Tale. Note that both works, but especially the Parable books should have trigger warnings for rape, child abduction, and violence.
    • 4/5
      We all know that Butler is an awesome writer. She is one of my all time favorite Sci-Fi authors. She really understands how to capture the reader and write about difficult subjects. Her prose, character development and world building are superb and this book is no exception. This is the second book in the duology. It is really good; however, I liked the first book better. All the religious stuff got to me after a while. A little over the top for my tastes. Though I did appreciate how she explored the idea that religion can be both good and bad. So much food for fodder in Butler's books. This would be an awesome book for a book club discussion. Just one word of caution, there are numerous difficult topics in this book, including, human trafficking, rape, murder, slavery, etc.
    • 4/5
      A direct sequel to Parable of the Sower, primarily continuing the story of Lauren Oya Olamina and her quest to found Earthseed, a faith but not religion, based on change and destiny. There's an interesting framing device added: most of the novel is from her journals, as with Sower, but now there's commentary, often quite negative, by Olamina's daughter. The emotional source of that enmity is left to be revealed at the very end, a bitter arc to counterpoint the journal's path. That path goes very dark for quite a while, but as Sower made clear, Olamina is a survivor. Trigger alert for those of us still recovering from the presidency of 2016-2020: the primary source of darkness is a right wing President who ran on the slogan "make America great again", around whom grew an army of modern-day Christian Crusaders. Butler's 1998 portrayal of the breadth and depths of the roots of the movement is frighteningly spot on.One other side note: every chapter of both books begin with poems from Olamina's Book of Earthseed. While they did not do much for me, I was intrigued by their similarity to the poetry of St Theresa of Avila. Highly recommended. We are awash in dystopian fiction, but few have the richness and inner core of Butler duology.
    • 4/5
      As the sequel to Parable of the Sower, this book goes further into the dystopian future America that Butler has created. At first we open up about 30 or so years after where the last book ended, with Lauren's daughter as the first-person narrator. I wasn't sure how much I was going to like that, but then we switched back to Lauren's journals pretty much right where we left off at the end of previous title, with Lauren and her crew settling on the land they dub "Acorn." From there, the book switches back and forth between Lauren and her daughter, with a few glimpses of writings by Lauren's husband and by one of her brothers.In some ways, I liked this book even more the previous title -- it was really interesting to see Lauren putting Earthseed into action and building a community; there was more of the politics of Christian America with its eerie similarities to today in some respects; and there were unresolved issues from the previous book that come to greater light here. Butler introduces more technologies, making this title even more strongly rooted in sci-fi, although she's also not far off in many of these -- for instance, "geneprints" are DNA testing and "dream masks" are VR goggles. Butler also makes some beautiful, if sad, parallels between Lauren and her brother.In other ways, this book was even more difficult than the last one. The loss of the walled city and Lauren's perilous trek north were scary, but nothing like the things that happen in this book. There was always a sense of hope in the previous book, no matter how slim. There were large swatches of this book where I did not have any hope for Lauren's situation. And while the end of the book is I think meant to be hopeful with Earthseed finally meeting "the destiny" of traveling to outer space to colonize new spaces, I cannot help but feel sad that Lauren and her daughter are never truly reunited and that her daughter and brother remain dedicated to a religion that enslaved Lauren and the other Earthseed members despite the evidence of this atrocity and I feel that the ending is at best bittersweet, if not downright bleak.All in all though, Butler has once again written a compelling and thought-provoking work. I think it is worth reading if you enjoyed the first book.
    • 5/5
      really liked the change up in writing style here. served as a great way to frame the story. and a good change from the first book. think I liked this more than the first as well, since it covered more ground.
    • 5/5
      Following Parable of the Sower, we continue following Lauren Oyamina's journals now that she and some of her followers and friends have established Acorn, a community living and working together while following her doctrine of Earthseed, in which she dreams of leaving earth altogether to live in the stars. But when a man is elected under the slogan "Make America Great Again" and some of the more violent followers of Christian America attack Acorn, Lauren has to use all her ingenuity to survive.Like the first book, it was surreal to read a book written in the 1990s and set just a few years from now feeling altogether real. I am a Christian and some of the descriptions of what supposedly "Christian" characters did was absolutely appalling and skin crawling, hard to read and try to process what other folks might think about what I believe - or what a group like Christian America might think about how our beliefs align (*shudder*). Either way, a difficult read. While the first one was all Lauren's journals, this has her daughter as a narrator, interspersing her own thoughts between those of her mother and some of her father, Bankole, as well. And exactly why does the daughter have such conflicting thoughts about her mother? That was part of the driving force behind my reading and continuing to turn pages. Though so much was grim, it was not without hope either.
    • 4/5
      I wanted to love this book - I loved the first part of the duology and I came to this one with high expectations. And I almost did not finish it - not because it was a bad book but because it was so unimpressive at the beginning that I wondered if it may me better off to stay with the first book only. Once you go through the first 1/4th of the book, the pace and the story picks up and I am happy that I read it - even I did not like it as much as the first one, it is still a good book. And the two novels combined together are impressive - despite the beginning of this one. The novel structure is similar to the first one - we are reading the journals of Lauren Olamina but we also get some entries from Bankole and a few more people and the entries we are getting are not selected by Lauren but by her daughter, at some point in the future, who also adds her own story and commentary at the start of each chapter. It is a slow start - the daughter story comes in pieces, not to spoil the story coming from the journals. And that's where something with the pacing seems to fall apart - the first quarter of the book sounds like the first book, except slower and more boring, as if Lauren herself selects what to publish/show. The story picks up in 2032, 5 years after we left Acorn and its inhabitants. They had somehow survived and even if they are not exactly thriving, they had managed to make a life for themselves. After slogging through them surviving, living through an election that should not have finished as it did (reading this in 2021 makes me wonder what kind of crystal ball did Butler have...) and through more of the new religion Earthseed, the story finally picks up when Acorn is destroyed. While I can see why we needed that first part, it could have been a lot shorter and concise - the first book had most of it already and did it better... And then Larkin is born, Acorn falls and Butler finally gets to writing the story of Earthseed and Lauren Olamina. Suffering, betrayals, people coming back after being considered dead, people dying when you least expect it and a lot of misery and heartbreak. The United States of the 2030s is anything but a happy place. But people survive and fight for their future and families. It is a cruel world, ran by zealots and idiots and it does not seem to be getting any better. But there is always a hope somewhere in there - as long as people can see future for their children, they will keep fighting. And then there is the cult/religion Earthseed. We know that it did not die - Larkin knows about it and considers it her mother's favorite child. It is unclear early on if it is because it got widespread or because she is writing a paper about something in the past but the hints are all there. And despite it driving the story and is the point of the story, it still did not sit well with me - Lauren was getting almost zealot-ish in places, carrying more about an idea than about a person (despite what she was writing/saying, her actions showed something different). I disliked her in the first novel and I am not sure I liked her here either. We get most of the story post-2035 only in the last chapter - I kept reading because I wanted that story. It did not disappoint but it kinda highlighted the pacing issue. I wonder how much of my opinion of the book got colored by my expectations. I usually do not have issues with slow moving books but something here was off from the start. It felt like a book that should move faster but somehow failed to as opposed to being designed to be slow. Still, it was worth reading. But I still find the first one to be the better book.
    • 5/5
      As heartbreaking and human as all her work, this struck very hard right now as it hits very close to home.
    • 5/5
      Every bit as intriguing and brilliant as Parable of the Sower.
    • 5/5
      This is the sequel to Parable of the Sower. It’s told by Larkin, the daughter of Lauren Olamina and her husband David. Larkin, now a mature woman, reads and reflects on Olamina’s journals.Olamina had founded a religion known as Earthseed, with the basic tenet being “God is Change”. She gathered people to her enclave, quietly converting them to her beliefs while providing a safe place in the midst of the climate change dystopian chaos of roving gangs of raiders, human trafficking, starvation and general societal breakdown.But the true threat comes when a right wing fascist President is elected. His slogan is ‘Make America Great Again’ (this was written in 1998!) He brings with him a brand of Christian fundamentalism that teaches that only turning to Christian extremism will pacify God and save the world. Those who don’t believe, are targeted by extreme vigilante groups. Naturally Earthseed falls, becomes a concentration camp, and the children are removed to appropriate Christian homes. Even Lauren’s long lost brother, Marcus, becomes a leader in this brand of far right Christianity.“God is Change” and the twists and turns as the story unfolds embody this.I was amazed by the presentience of this novel, as it examines climate change and the resulting political and societal change leading to more death and destruction.
    • 4/5
      this book did suffer from uneven pacing, and also the story-telling structure is a bit awkward. However, Butler is brilliant, and as I read more, I was drawn into this dystopian SciFi novel. I really could not get over how prescient the story telling was, considering that it was written in the 90's. There is a religious zealot right-wing politician whose slogan is "Make America Great Again." (really) Christian Americans separate the children of "heathens" from their parents. Corporate power overtakes individual liberty. Many of the scenes in this book are difficult and violent, and the more difficult because it doesn't seem entirely removed from present reality. And then there is the overarching issue of our hero, Lauren, who is admirable in many ways, but also with the flaws of any leader seeking power, and the difficult mother-daughter dynamic that sets up. Lauren, who founds the Earth Seed Movement ends the book, like Moses, seeing her followers leave for the stars (the promised land), but unable to go with them. She is also a bit of a broken women when she reflects on the costs of her mission.
    • 3/5
      This is the sequel to Parable of the Sower, which recounted the struggles of Lauren Oya Olamina, a young black Californian, as the USA staggered toward near-disintegration under the stresses of global warming and social change in the 2020s. Talents takes up the tale in the early 2030s, when Olamina (as she is generally called), her husband Taylor Bankole, and their assorted friends, adopted family, and followers are starting to make a real success of Acorn, the settlement they've built on Bankole's land in northern California. Olamina is also hoping to spread her new religion, Earthseed, but so far has not yet fully converted even all of the inhabitants of Acorn. Then disaster strikes, in the form of the unofficial army of the religious fanatic who has recently been elected President of the United States. Acorn is captured, the children are taken away to be raised in "good Christian American families", and Acorn becomes Camp Christian, a reeducation camp for the adults that survived the attack. They are effectively slaves until they can find a way to overcome their guards and the electronic slave collars.

      The story is told in alternating passages from Olamina's journal, the self-centered narrative of Olamina's adult daughter sixty years later, and a few passages from the books written by Bankole and by Olamina's brother Marcus. It's an interestingly layered account of some very complicated people, and of an America slowly and painfully rebuilding, after the collapse in the previous book. Recommended.