fledgling – Octavia E. Butler

The story begins with a lone, injured, amnesiac, ten-year old, black girl. She is lost outside, somewhere in the USA, and doesn’t know who or what she is.
 
Vulnerable, or what?
 
Butler’s brilliant idea is to give her small protagonist significant power, tempered by a virtuous character. Shori turns out to be a vampire and doesn’t mean anyone any harm, but hey, a girl gotta eat.
 
Shori doesn’t recall anything and so we find ourselves along for the ride of finding out with her, all the while knowing that ignorance spells danger. Protective and loving of those whose blood she craves, Shori is brave and self-assured, but at risk.
 
She is 53, but a child in appearance, so that when she and Wright have sex, you’d expect all kinds of alarm bells to be going off, but Butler has the delicacy and the skill to present it as legitimate and adult. The vampire is the stronger, the faster, the one in charge. She has a robust intellect and it is her choice. Rather than innocent or mature, Shori has an ageless self-possession.
 
Butler is superbly organized and deft in the unforced way that she presents new information and characters, so that one is always clear about what is going on and why. I admire this as a writer as much as I appreciate it as a reader. She also achieves the difficult feat of making ethical leadership not just admirable, but interesting.
 
Fledgling is a book for truth, and respect for justice, and diverse consensual relationship arrangements. The vampire-human symbiosis is a reflection on human interdependence and the responsibility that corresponds to power over others.
 
But primarily, or ultimately, it’s a stirring human story, of a plucky young woman with the chance of a life, if she can but survive.