Customer Reviews

Clay's Ark

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The last novel in her Patternist series to be published, it shares a lot more in common with her Xenogenesis trilogy in tone and subject material. Of the Patternist novels that I have read, that group seems more oriented towards questions of power and dominance--basically, who is stronger, and what are the responsibilities of that role. The series actually begins with Wild Seed, which explains the character of Doro, who then sees a success in his human breeding program in Mind of My Mind. Clay's Ark is next in the timeline, but it only refers obliquely to the existence of a psionic pattern (late in the novel, it explains the macguffin for the faster than light drive used by the spaceship that returns to Earth), but it mainly concerns the alien organism that creates the Clayarks. The next book, Patternmaster, shows these two groups--the Patternists and the Clayarks--millennia later, both almost unrecognizable as human.

It is this evolution away from humanity that becomes the main theme of Xenogenesis, but it is in the forefront of Clay's Ark. The difference, however, is that this evolution is almost entirely negative here, whereas in Xenogenesis there's an ambiguity to it that makes it much more complex than just a good/bad issue. Change happens (to quote Butler's more recent work). Why is it negative here in Clay's Ark? Because of the mindlessness of the extraterrestrial interaction. As humans, thinking and feeling humans, we see ourselves as ratiocentric--that is, we value the power of logic and rational thought and discount the so-called "animal" urges of instinct and biological compulsion. This dichotomy makes up the conflict between the two groups in Patternmaster: the Patternists are pure thought, ruled by the power of the mind, whereas the Clayarks are all biological urges, roaming free, living life in the here and now. The human race has bifurcated, and although a "mute" semblance remains, humans are portrayed as beings where both mind and body are weak and dull. In Xenogenesis, Butler changes this, and the organism that is entirely mutable is portrayed as the strongest.

Because it contains a lot of adventure--there's kidnapping and close escapes and gunfire and more violence than a Fox Saturday night-- Clay's Ark hides a lot of this underlying thought. Only the struggle that Eli continues to endure breaks this action-orientation; the rest of the characters are driven either by the disease or their human nature to respond to the events. While not as hopeful or thoughtful as her later work, I liked this one tremendously.

If you've read her excellent _Mind of My Mind_ and _Patternmaster_, you might wonder about how the world changed so much between these two novels and what exactly these Clayarks are. Well, this book clarifies much of this. While it's probably a notch below the other two in the series, it's well worth reading and essential if you want a complete understanding of the Patternmaster series

Clay's Ark is a wonderful taut, gripping and suspenseful tale. Butler really forces the reader to analyze his or her perceptions of what it really means to be human by delving deeply in to human behavior and ethical issues. Ethical issues such as: gang violence, racism, suicide, artificial insemination, AIDS, etc. I highly recommend the text. It should be required reading in literature classes for students to discuss and write about "big questions" and problems that affect our world. Further, Ms. Butler's use of metaphor, simile and foreshadowing is outstanding. The images she creates with words are vivid and concise. Any reader can visualize this story.

I wish that whoever wrote the synopsis of the book for the web page knew that Asa Elias Doyle is a male, not a female!

I have read everything Octavia Butler has in print. I adore her depth of emotion and insight that goes into every story she writes.

CLAY'S ARK is the exception. This is easily her worst book. But remember, Octavia's worst is still better than most author's best.

Simply put, if an artist is going to take me to hell, they better teach me something important. This book contains gang rape scenes of a young leukemia-victim girl, bloody fights described in excruciating detail, an relentless stream of utterly mind-numbing scenes of violence.

And, unlike PARABLE OF THE SOWER, which also contains many difficult scenes and images, you get virtually nothing from the story. No lessons, no hope, nothing. Octavia has written that she was very depressed when writing this book, sharing chapters with a friend who was suffering from a terminal illness. I respect that this reflects where she was, but that doesn't mean I want to go there with her.

And those of you wanting to read everything in the Patternist series should know that CLAY'S ARK barely touches on threads from the other books. I was sucked into reading it to satisfy my completist strain as well, and suffered for it.

Skip it. Period. Read all her other works.

This might be the most suspenseful of the several novels I've read from Octavia Butler, but it comes up a little short on some of her key strengths. Granted, Butler's supremely unique imagination is still at play here, in the story of a space crew that comes back to Earth with an alien virus that uses human carriers like mere conduits for relentlessly propagating itself. Another mindbendingly creative concept from Butler, but unfortunately this novel comes out rather sour and ugly in the execution. The dysfunctional near-future society that is Butler's usual motif simply becomes a depressing mess here, with no redeeming humanity. We get almost uniformly violent and pitiless characters (except for the circle of protagonists) and a depressing, disturbing parade of human misery. Thus, the dystopian aspects of this tale are missing the elements that make similar settings so compelling in Butler's better novels – such as the African mythology backdrop to "Wild Seed" or the philosophical optimism of "Parable of the Sower." There is also a structural problem with this book, in that Butler alternates chapter-by-chapter between flashbacks and events in the present, and neither of these running narratives are told completely in chronological order. This is a non-linear technique that some writers have used successfully to reinforce their themes or the suspense of the story, but here it just slows down the effectiveness of Butler's ideas. I still enthusiastically recommend the works of Octavia Butler for all fans of thought-provoking and emotionally compelling speculative fiction, but this book doesn't quite stack up with her best. [~doomsdayer520~]

I was so enthralled by "Dawn" and the subsequent books in that trilogy that I set out to read everything I could by Butler. Overall I find her novels to be exceptional sci-fi with some very thought provoking anthropology and history thrown into the mix. I was disappointed in Clay's Ark, and I think it was primarily because, compared to Butler's other novels, it was the leanest. While she comments on the bleak direction the future of the U.S. is headed in, this tale did not stay with me or terrify me the way the "Parable" books did. I didn't feel as attached to these characters as I did to their parallel counterparts in the Patternmaster. It's an interesting story, but not Butler at her best. If you're as obsesseive as I am about my favorite authors, read it anyway! If you're new to Butler, start with Parable of the Sower or Dawn.

Clay's Ark is fittingly the final volume in Octavia Butler's Patternist series. While in the chronological order Clay's Ark would be third, its proper place in the reading order is that of the publication order: fifth. Some may find it preferable to read the Patternist novels chronologically, but this would be something of a mistake.

Patternmaster, the first published and last in the timeline, sets up our world as it will be in thousands of years. Technology has all but disappeared and there are telepaths ruling from households and controlling mutes, those humans without telepathic power. A third group are the clayarks, disease-ridden once humans who are disgustingly deformed and are feared and hunted. This brings us to Mind of My Mind where we see a world not too different than the one in which we now live, only the telepaths are only just beginning to take control. Next is the forgettable and all but disowned by Butler Survivor. The clayark disease has ravaged the Earth and one last group is permitted to settle a different planet. It ties into the Patternist world, but only from a tangent. Wild Seed gives us the origins of Doro, he who had the breeding program to develop the telepaths.

This brings us to the final novel in the Patternist sequence: Clay's Ark. Now, if we had not read Patternmaster we would have no idea what the clayarks are to become or what what the significance of the title Clay's Ark actually is. The title itself rewards readers of the series while it sets of warning bells about the content of the novel. If we are reading in publication order we know that the clayarks came from some sort of extra terrestrial virus / entity and that they overran the land. We know that something bad is coming and that this novel is likely to show us how it happened.

Clay's Ark tells two stories: Past and Present. Past features an initially unnamed man who is human, but is struggling against some alien nature. He came from a space ship which crashed back on Earth after being gone for years. The ship: Clay's Ark. The unnamed man has heightened senses which most humans never use and he feels an urgency to be near other humans, to touch them, to scratch them...to infect them. He knows it is wrong, he knows that it would be very, very bad, but the disease he has leaves him no choice.

Present tells a different story. A man (Dr. Blake Maslin) is driving across the southern California desert with his two daughters (the leukemia stricken Keira, and Rane) when they are all kidnapped while at a rest stop during a sandstorm. They are not killed, raped, ransomed, robbed, or tortured. They are brought to an isolated farm and forced to stay while Eli, the nominal leader of a gang of sickly looking men and women with super strength, explains about the disease they all share and why they had to take the Maslins. One guess as to what the disease is.

Clay's Ark is a bleak, brutal novel filled with tension and danger. Octavia Butler is doing nothing more than telling us a story in which the world is a dangerous place and about to get worse. Clay's Ark is a harrowing novel and except for several chapters at the farm, it feels like everyone is on the move trying to escape from something...from the disease, from the not yet named clayarks, from the regular humans who are just about as bad as the disease Eli's group carries. There is very little joy in Clay's Ark, but Butler's storytelling is such that we don't want to look away. Clay's Ark is one of the stronger novels in the Patternist sequence (up there with Mind of My Mind and Wild Seed). Clay's Ark is perhaps the perfect way to wrap up the Patternist sequence. As with all of of Butler's novels we are left with questions as to what happens after the last page, but Butler has filled in as much of this world as needs to be.

While only one of Butler's early novels (Kindred) holds up to her later work, the Patternist sequence is comprised of five reasonably short (200 page) novels which at their best are quite entertaining. Octavia Butler is an author not to be missed.

-Joe Sherry

Compared to most other SF novels, Clay's Ark could be considered a great book. However, compared to other books by Butler, it falls short. Not because of craft. The book's pacing and plotting are near perfect; there are no wasted words. But while, it is extremely readable, the book suffers in it's characterisations. Here is where my initial remark comes into play. Compared to most SF, characters like Blake are extremely interesting, but compared to the characters Butler creates in her other Patternist novels 'Wild Seed' and 'Mind of my mind'.

The moral dilemmas facing the main characters are not as balanced as in Butler's other work. The survival instinct of the alien virus is so strong, that the characters are partially excused for their actions. In addition, the story builds magnificently, but wraps up abruptly.

Bottom line -- if you have never read an Octavia Butler novel start with 'Wild Seed' or 'Kindred', but if you are already a fan, there is enough in this book to make it enjoyable.

Having read several of Butler's books, I must say that I found this one far less readable than Dawn or the Patternist novels. Not only is it tedious and depressing, but it offers less food for thought than Wildseed or Dawn. Whereas those books describe the creation of unique and idealistic societies, the community described in Clay's Ark is a besieged group of pariahs staving off inevitable doom.
Furthermore, I read novels mostly for escape and enjoyment. Reading end-to-end accounts of bruality and human misery just isn't my idea of an escape.
Finally, the story abruptly ends, with no real sequel apparently in the works, right where an interesting sociological experiment could have been invisioned: the unleashing of the Clay's Ark virus upon humanity. A real bummer for an Octavia E. Butler novel...

This book commanded me to read it in one sitting. This is something few novels can do given my relatively short attention span. This book falls under the "What happens when ET microbes come to earth" category. Hint - we usually die. If you like this book, try Blood Music by Greg Bear.