Imago: Xenogenesis III [Import] [Paperback]

Octavia Butler (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: VGSF (Gollancz) (1990)
• ISBN-10: 0575047763
• ISBN-13: 978-0575047761
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,092,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006) was the author of many novels, including Dawn, Wild Seed, and Parable of the Sower. She was the recipient of a MacArthur Award and a Nebula Award, and she twice won the Hugo Award.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing vision of the future through Butler's eyes., July 19, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Imago (Mass Market Paperback)

The third book in the Xenogenesis series involves more of the Oankali-Human children born on an earth that will be reaved of its natural resources and left for dead in a scant few centuries.

Butler shocks reader and characters alike -- two of the Human-Oankali children do not take after their parents despite careful genetic planets -- they develop, on their own, into Ooloi -- the most powerful and dangerous creatures of the Oankali race: capable of great healing or concocting lethal poisons from the genetic information that every sense has experienced over their lifetime.

Imago follows first one, then the other ooloi youth as they discover what they are, suffer greatly from lack of skill with the ooloi talents, and loneliness from being the only ones of their kind in the new generation. Eventually they find themselves and manage a sort of stability. The third gender is not as disturbing as it might have been in the hands of a less sensitive author.

This series closes with a solid finality the assimilation of mankind into the Oankali genetics...and the hard fate remaining for the 'purist' humans who choose to terraform another planet to live on, since there will be no earth for them after the Oankali are through.

The series has left me feeling marginally unsettled, given Butler's vision of the future is one that indicates the human race must change if it is to survive en masse

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book..., January 29, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Imago (Book Three of the Xenogenesis Series) (Mass Market Paperback)

this is a wonderful book, but buy "Lilith's Brood" instead, which includes this book and the other two in the trilogy.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Conclusion to a Great Series, May 23, 2002

By 

watzizname "watzizname" (Murfreesboro, Tennessee) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Imago (Book Three of the Xenogenesis Series) (Mass Market Paperback)

An outstandingly fine story! This is the third and final book of Xenogenesis, also published as "Lilith's Brood" (all 3 books in one cover; cheaper than buying them separately). See "Lilith's Brood" for reviews of the entire series.

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