The basic wheeze feels depressingly prescient. Climate change is hitting the planet and there is growing unrest and violence in the US. To begin with, Lauren and her family do their best to carry on life as normal. But Lauren becomes increasingly conscious of the need to prepare for disaster.
At the same time, this pastor's daughter is working out her own religious ideas, based on the idea that "God is change" and humanity must get out into space if it is to survive. She comes to call this religion "Earthseed", and quotations from her thoughts on the subject open every chapter.
As well as the prescient stuff about the collapse of civilisation, and Lauren's philosophical musings on change, there's a fair bit about the effects of different made-up drugs. The drugs Lauren's late mother used while pregnant have left Lauren as hyper empathetic, so she feels the pain she sees in other - making it hard to fight back when she is attacked. Another drug makes people set things on fire, including themselves.
That Lauren is a Sharer is a useful complication: it means Butler must find more ingenious ways of dealing with any given threat than simply whacking or shooting it. But I felt the pyromaniac drug made its users a bit generic - the punks in all manner of cod sci-fi who have no more motivation than a delight in causing chaos. That's a shame because this book is otherwise so good on the nuance and contradiction of character. It's a long way from depictions of Lauren's family: her brother's descent into crime, her father being in her eyes a good man for all he beats his children, the coldness of Lauren's stepmother.
Lauren navigates various difficult situations where people don't want to face difficult truths and find it hard to trust strangers. There are some big action sequences, and a fair bit of violence, but what's epecially compelling is how the tension builds and builds. I found it utterly engrossing.
See also: me on Kindred by Octavia E Butler
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