Mind of My Mind

Book 2 of the Patternist series

‍

WOW. I really enjoyed this book! It's a tense ride to an unexpected and very satisfying end.

‍

Ms. Butler is very good at developing a character. Sometimes when I watch a movie or read a book, if the characters aren’t well-developed, I lose track of who they are. Ms. Butlers characters are so well defined that they stay rooted in my mind over more than one book.

‍

Jan turned to walk down the pathway to the child’s house. As she came even with the girl, some sentimentality about the eyes made her stop and hold out her hand.

‍

“Will you walk to the house with me, Margaret?” The child took the offered hand and walked solemnly beside Jan. Jan automatically blocked any mental contact with her.

‍

She had learned painfully that children not only had no depth but that their unstable little animal minds could deliver one emotional outburst after another.        

This book had an ensemble cast but every individual is uniquely defined in my head. I think that says a lot about a person’s writing.

‍

In this book, the main characters are replaced by a new set and the story takes a turn that leaves the reader wondering where it might go from here. How far can this go before someone or something stops it?

‍

Well, why did I want to see as many latents as possible brought through transition? So I could be an empress? I wouldn’t even say that out loud. It sounded too stupid. But, whatever I called myself, I was definitely going to wind up with a lot of people taking orders from me, and that really didn’t sound like such a bad thing.

‍

Again, consent is an undertone in the book, but not in the way we are familiar with it. "Slavery" is the word used in the book, but I felt that choice was heavy-handed. Power is an obvious theme.

‍

But what I have noticed since I read Ms. Butler’s wikipedia page is that there seems to be a coincidence in the fact that Ms. Butler never had children (nor, possibly, even an intimate relationship) yet all five books of hers that I’ve read thus far linger on the theme of manipulating people to have children for a specific genetic reason.

‍

In some books, the people don’t actually touch each and in others incest is a routine and accepted occurrence.

‍

This is great science-fiction.

‍