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Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation by Damian Duffy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I read the book in the 90s and in reading this I forgot how dystopic it truly was. (I was wavering between 3-4 stars for this) I had forgotten things that I disliked a lot but over all I was depressed to see how close Butler called a lot of it. We're not quite this bad... yet but there is potential. Funny that I read it when it came out which was a near future SF at the time and now I'm literally reviewing this in the year much of this was set in.

America has collapsed (has the rest of the world? It's not clear from this) There's little food or water or work and what work there is is basically a slave state where you live in company housing and paid in script only good in company stores. My people were coal miners 100 years ago and this is how they lived so I can easily believe we'd bring it back (look at billionaires and what they're trying right now).

Lauren has lived a relatively sheltered life in California with her step mother and her father who is a reverend. Lauren's mom took some drug when she was in utero giving her hyperempathy syndrome where she feels pain to the point of blacking out if someone nearby is being hurt (which seems not to bother her if she shoots someone dead which felt like a McGuffin to me) Lauren is about 16-17 at the opening of this. She lives in a walled city with her family but raids from the outside are getting worse. Lauren teaches little kids (one of the few people who can still read) and sees herself as a prophet of a new religion the titular earthseed which is more philosophy like Buddhism than a religion worshipping a god.

Circumstances eventually force her out into this Mad Max of a world. She brings two people from her town with her and slowly as she feels compelled to go north, more and more people join them, mostly broken people, people running from the system, people with children to protect. She reads from her Earthseed Book of the Living that she's been writing. Someone accuses her of being in a cult but she doesn't see it that way (as for me yes and no. Yes it functions like one but right now it is altruistic )

One of the people she picks up is an older man Bankrole who has land up north that they can live on and this volume ends when they finish the long dangerous journey there. It's hard to cut a novel down into a graphic novel. Is it a good adaptation? I can't say. I don't remember 30 years ago when I read this well enough and given the local climate I'm not up for a reread. I will say it IS nice to see them celebrating Lauren's heritage because I remember when publishing did all it could to hide the fact that Butler and her characters were of African descent.

That said I wasn't a giant fan of the art. The religious aspect became overwhelming but that wasn't a big problem. Lauren's May-December relationship with someone 40 years her senior hits real different in the middle of the whole Epstein Files drama. (and I do remember not caring for it 30 years ago either).

So yeah content warning, dystopia, graphic violence (gun, knife more) mentions of drug use, mentions of rape, mentions of child rape and murder



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