Parable of the Talents

by Octavia E. Butler

The follow up book to Parable of the Sower. This is a fantastic read, possibly better still than the preceding novel.

The story continues with the heroine trying to setup her Earthseed religion, but ending up enslaved, having her baby daughter taken from her before finally succeeding and her daughter finding her many years later. It might seem like a happy ending, but it is not so simple with internal family and religious feuds.

Given the name of the book, it is interesting to discuss which of the main characters is representing which of the servants in the biblical story of the same name as told in Mathew 25:14-30. Or maybe such a link is not intended by the author.

The book is also remarkably prescient of today's world, climate change, the religious right and especially of the years with Trump as president. Whilst we have avoided the apocalypse so far, the problems have not disappeared.