Top
‘A book that shifted my life… Epic, game-changing, moving and brilliant’ VIOLA DAVIS on Wild Seed

‘Butler’s evocative, often troubling novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human’ NEW YORK TIMES

A PATTERNIST NOVEL: BOOK THREE

Blake Maslin is a doctor. In an alternate America marked by volatile class warfare, he and his twin daughters are taken captive by armed men demanding urgent medical care.

In an isolated desert compound, the family encounter a collective of people suffering from an unknown and deadly disease. They appear sickly yet possess unnatural strength, torn between the dangerous compulsion to infect others or to hold on to their own humanity.

In the following hours, Blake and his daughters each must make a vital choice: risk everything to escape infection and warn the rest of the world, or accept their place in this strange new society.

Reviews

Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
One cannot finish Kindred without feeling changed. It is a shattering work of art
BBC
[A] must-read novel
Refinery 29
Everyone should read at least one novel by the grand dame of science fiction, and Kindred is a perfect (and harrowing and disturbing and brilliant) place to start
Junot Diaz
One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century. One cannot exaggerate the impact she has had
Guardian
Butler's prose, always pared back to the bone, delineates the painful paradoxes of metamorphosis with compelling precision
New York Times
[Her] evocative, often troubling, novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human
The Pool
No novel I've read this year has felt as relevant, as gut-wrenching or as essential... If you've ever tweeted "All Lives Matter", someone needs to shove Kindred into your hand, and quickly
Harlan Ellison
Kindred is that rare magical artifact . . . the novel one returns to, again and again
Tor
The immediate effect of reading Octavia Butler's Kindred is to make every other time travel book in the world look as if it's wimping out... This is a brilliant book, utterly absorbing, very well written, and deeply distressing. It's very hard to read, not because it's not good but because it's so good
Kirkus
A searing, caustic examination of bizarre and alien practices on the third planet from the sun
Los Angeles Times
One of the most original, thought-provoking works examining race and identity
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
If you haven't read Butler, you don't yet understand how rich the possibilities of science fiction can be
Village Voice
Butler's books are exceptional
Cory Doctorow
Few writers in our field are so good at blending page-turners with philosophical questions so seamlessly
Independent
A dark, compelling and still horribly resonant time travel story
Starburst
Impossible to turn away from once you've devoured the first few pages

The Patternist Series