I was encouraged at the start of the second book, when Lauren is being criticized by her very own daughter, but >!by the end of that book you find out the daughter really never knew her mother and only met her once.!<

Butler’s character development is not as strong as her world building, although I had no such issues with either Wildseed or Kindred. As for the older man and teenage girl issues, I had a lot more problems with Clay’s Ark then the Parable series in that sense.

By the end of the Parable series, I was really confused: did Butler believe in Earthseed? Did Butler want us to believe in Earthseed or was Butler using it as a plot device?

Butler very clearly thought Christianity was problematic. Obviously a great deal of book 2 shows horrible things being done in the name of Christianity. But also in book one, there is the incident where the one woman looting the compound looks at the dead drug addict, and says to Lauren “she died for our sins” I remember that because it was so odd.

In the book to Lauren tells her brother, something like “most people are not allowed to publicly criticize Earthseed here, but I’ll let you do it” this is not a sign of a community that believes in its religion, not allowing criticism.

But I think what most convinces me that Butler does not want us to take Earthseed too seriously is that the books are titled with stories from the Christian Bible. Butler is literally framing Earthseed with Christianity, and showing how flawed Christianity is.

Although I thought it was hard to pick up, I think Butler is skeptical of Lauren and Earthseed. Maybe in book 3 she was going to reveal that.

I read that they have her notes for what she would have written in book 3. I think there was some talk of asking in NK Jemison to write it, and I would be buying that book so fast if it happened. But, I have seen a quote from NK Jemisin saying that she thinks Book 3 should exist in the imagination of the readers .

Wild Seed is amazing but I didn’t care for any of the rest of the Patternist series

“Anthropological”. Exactly! All the books in the Hainish cycle are explorations in world building and the implications of each society. I find them all so interesting. But my favorites are City of Illusions, The Telling. And Left Hand

I love this story. Also I was curious so I found a PDF version and replaced all the male pronouns and titles with female ones, just to see if it became a different story. It did. It was super interesting in how differently it felt (come to think of it, I never did finish reading that version. Maybe that is how I should spend these last 3 days of vacation)

Le Guin has some good interviews where she talked about why she ultimately decided to use masculine pronouns. Let me see if I can find one … OH. It is in the afterward of at least one of the versions. http://theliterarylink.com/afterword.html