Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1)

Exciting read, one of the books I couldn't put down. It's a very interesting analysis of humans and how they live together, and thoughts about if a kind of "benevolent dictator" would make it better or worse. I feel like the book doesn't come to a conclusion on its own, but let's readers think about it and opens some really interesting questions I hadn't really thought about before. The characters and development are great, and the story is well written and very entertaining besides making me think.

I couldn't stop myself from reading it. Once start, mate, this book wasn't leaving my hands. How long has it been since my last Butler book? Omg, she's such a good writer. The way she hooks you up is magic. If only her and Le Guin were a bit more queer and less binary in their writings, but, well...

The Oankali have strange and disturbing ideas about consent, which makes this an uncomfortable book to read. (This is, like, intentional, though.)

There's a disregard for singular 'they' as a genderless pronoun, instead 'it' is used to refer to the Ooloi; this doesn't feel as bad as it might because it's apparently the pronoun that the Ooloi chose to use for themselves in English

The biggest problem I have with it technically is that not all that much happens for much of the book? At least the first half is spent with Lilith just learning things about the Oankali. Which is interesting, but pretty slow