The main character is the world’s only black vampire, and the main storyline is about her being attacked by others of her kind who think she’s an abomination that should never be allowed to breed. This is a thread that weirdly gets raised and then dropped in the narrative, but again, it can make for some uncomfortable reading.Īnd finally, there’s just the racial aspects of the story. There’s also some rather dubious consent issues, in that a vampire’s bite makes a human want them both sexually and emotionally, and it’s pretty clear that at least initially, some of those humans would not have wanted that contact. That made it very uncomfortable for me to read the love and sex scenes between her and the adult human characters. For one: the main character is 53 years old, but she’s regularly described as looking like a ten-year-old human girl. I do have to mention some trigger warnings alongside my endorsement of this book, though. (In other words, the author who’s a black woman writes more insightful social commentary than the one who’s a white man. Both are excellent for how they interrogate and interpret the vampire mythos I might have to give the win to Fledgling for the brilliant ways it tackles race as well.

This is probably my second-favorite vampire book, to be honest… Maybe even my first-favorite I’d have to reread Of Saints and Shadows (Peter Octavian) (my current top pick) to decide between them. What’s not to love? And it’s got great vampire politics – like, the stuff Stephanie Meyer was going for with the later Twilight books, only done much better. I mean, its main character is a black female vampire in an interracial polyamorous coven, whose dark skin is actually an advantage because it lets her burn more slowly in the sunlight than other vamps.

The fledgling octavia butler