Fledgling by Octvia E. Butler
I don’t even know how to intro this review other than I finally decided to pick this up and I did so promptly on 1/1/2026. Lord have mercy…
A bit of background, I have read a lot of Octavia E. Butler’s books, this is mostly thanks to Njeri from OnyxPages on BookTube. She hosted an event called the OEB Slow Read. We read Butler’s books in publication order. Due to just life I fell out of the scheduled reading and thus heavily delayed reading Fledgling. And I had heard whispers about this being a very difficult read and it being a lot of people least favorite book of hers.
Fledgling is about our main character who wakes up in a dark cave and is ravenous. Once out of the cave she finds herself at a burned down neighborhood with absolutely no memories of who she is and why she is there. So she wanders, killing animals with crazy speed and strength. She has been badly burned but is healing quickly the more she eats, the more blood she consumes. Continuing to wander she finds herself alongside a road where a man pulls over exclaiming that god she’s just a kid she shouldn’t be out here alone like this. Remember that difficult to read part. Yeah buckle IN! First he refers to her as ‘jailbait’. Then realizing she is hurt offers to take her to the hospital. MC does not want that and quickly BITES this man. He’s astonished and not as scared as I think a human should be. So, this man hides her in his place, our main character doesn’t remember her name so he names her Renee. This is a vampire story after all, Renee bites this man more and he becomes enamored with her…and that’s when things get sexual.
Sexual!? Huh? Yeah… also, turns out ‘Renee’ is a 50 year old vampire who looks still like a human child. ‘Renee’ soon need to fill in the gaps of her lost memories and find out who has done this to her and why.
Sigh…This was a rough read. I was insanely uncomfortable. I wrote in my journal “Already I’m thinking why not make the main character older?? But I wonder if Butler was pointing out the sexualization of Black girls.”. I went into this with this thought at the forefront of my brain. And try as I might I was having a hard time connecting these dots together. I just kept getting grossed out with these adults wanting and lusting for this vampire that looks 11 years old. Literally there’s a part where a grown man says he saw a photo of her and wanted her.
Factoring in what is happening in the world I was just sick to my stomach.
It wasn’t until I told my friend Tati that I finished the book that I started to grasp a little bit more on what is being done with this book. The uncomfortably is purposeful, we all should read this and be like WHAT THE FUCK?! Because that energy should be taken out in the world where grown adults are taking advantage of children. We have a whole list of these assholes that keeps getting redacted and not published!
Grooming is clear and rampant in this book, it makes your skin crawl. It has you saying I don’t give a rats ass if she is technically 50+years old the language coming from these adults is unacceptable!
I think this story however would have been just as compelling if the main character looked 25 years old. I think having it be a child was a choice and one that I’m uncomfortable with.
I’ll be honest and say I keep thinking about this and digest my thoughts. I finished this book on 1/5/2026 and have added 2 additional entries in my journal just purging my thoughts on it and on the world.
If you’ve read this far I’d like to discuss something else about the book and that is that I couldn’t help but think of Tananarive Due’s My Soul to Keep! There are many similarities and I was starting to see more how Butler was an inspiration for this story. Which reminded me that I hadn’t read the last book yet. And in the last book there is also an uncomfortable relationship. Spoilers if you haven’t read the series:"
Fana is like 17-19 (can’t specifically remember as I write this) and Michel is 50+ years old and he looks around college age. How would I feel going into the final book in the series My Soul to Take, having just read Fledgling? Guess we’ll have to see.
