I need to get my bearings

This is one of the "good books" I mentioned earlier. My experience of reading this book was gradually overlaid with external emotions, because Octavia Butler died in February of this year, and this will be (as far as I know) her last book. I met her some years ago, and liked & admired her a lot. There are still a number of her books I haven't read - the Xenogenesis trilogy, for instance - but there won't be any new ones after that, and it's hard for that not to bite deep, because there should have been. And they would have been important.

( Fledgling, Octavia Butler. )