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Fledgling  By  cover art

Fledgling

By: Octavia E. Butler
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
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Publisher's summary

This is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly unhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted - and still wants - to destroy her and those she cares for and how she can save herself.

©2005 Octavia E. Butler (P)2020 Recorded Books
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: Romance

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What listeners say about Fledgling

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    1 out of 5 stars
  • JG
  • 07-18-20

Why is everyone okay with the child porn imagery?

I'm not a prude by any means. But when you describe a 10 year old having sex with an adult, that's just wrong. I don't care if she's supposed to be older, it's described as a 10 year old, repeatedly, carefully ensuring you cannot make the mistake that this isn't a child's body. I could forgive it if there wasn't a graphic scene. But I couldn't even make it beyond this.

I've heard many amazing things about Butler, but this was clearly not the book I should have read first. Or at all. Literally none of the reviews discuss the child pornography in the room!

The reader was good. I was interested, thinking "no, nobody mentioned child porn" until it very much went there.

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57 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

really?

I used to have this book, read by someone else. That, was a great book!! The woman that reads this version is a real whiner! it's awful!! Horrible! Soooo disappointed.

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49 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

narrorator...

I remember the story from when I was younger. it's a great great story. but this narrorator sounds like shes having a contestant orgasm. it's really off putting from the story. but I really wanted to hear the story so I had to tolerate it. ew though. it was hard.

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44 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Narrator was not dynamic

I might have liked this book better if I read it instead of listening to it. The narrator spoke without feeling, just matter of fact like. It left me feeling like no one felt any emotion, or what they did feel was mild. This also made the story very anticlimactic. I was surprised when it ended. The stories of the Ina were interesting, and would be more so if told in a dynamic voice, but the story seemed to lack a point. The delivery of all the information just seemed off.

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26 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

FANTASTIC! No spoilers

Fresh story, from a fresh perspective. The ‘visual age’ of lead character was off-putting at first, but it quickly becomes apparent she is not a child. The narrator is great—her voice is measured, not flat, as some reviewers have said. True, she isn’t all breathless and sparkly, but that’s not something I want to hear for 8 hours—THANK YOU! The only thing I can say is I wanted the story to go faster because I wanted to know what would happen.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Don’t choose this story

If you can get past the pedophilia, maybe you can stomach this story. However, I found the story repetitive and somewhat dull, not fully fleshed out.

I would eliminate the constant references to her looking like a ten year old adjacent to sex scenes.

There’s a narrative here that could have been explored but wasn’t (racism) and a narrative that could have been interesting (the power dynamics of relationships and and the exploitative nature of their symbiosis) but really never got deep.

It’s just a dull story that will gross you out at times because of all the people having sex with this vampire that looks ten years old.

Also - the narration is fair, at best.

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

sexually active vamp that looks 10. nope

Good things first I spose. I actually didn't mind the story as a whole, but from what I can tell, there wasn't a good reason to make the MC look 10. it doesn't add to the story, it instead distracts from it more than anything.

Narrator did a good job though, so that's a plus.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

interesting metaphors

Really interesting story with deep parallels to life as a POC in the US. Beautifully written, so that the parallels are subtle. So much depth to the story if you can understand what you are looking at. And if not, still an engaging, entertaining story for a mature reader (meaning older than YA target audience).

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great novel from a great author

This has to be one of the most common-sensical, tragic, and heart-warming approaches to the vampire legend I've ever read or listened to. I really wish the author hadn't passed away not long after publishing this, as I'd really like to read more stories based on the premise. This story seems to have many layers which appealed to me. It addressed and portrayed unusual relationships, cultural baggage, loss, triumph--often loss and triumph were intermixed--love, difficulties in getting past appearances and personal paradigms, courage under immense pressure, evil, complacence, duty, and sense of duty. It is a complex story from a complex author, but without the author talking down to the reader, and well worth the read. There were a number of social and psychological lessons to be appreciated here, though the story does not appear to be written primarily as a message-novel. In addition, the narrator was excellent. I enjoyed her voice(s) and her narration was fluid enough and passionate enough that I often forgot I was listening to someone read the story. I'll be looking for more of her work. :)

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Great author. But this is 1 star.

The writing is not the best by this author. The Imago series is amazing as are many of her other works. The vampire creatures have an overwhelming amount of positive traits with no real downside other than inability to move in daylight which the main character has overcome. It removes the tension of immortality at a price. The highly sexual main character is described as a child. This is an obvious issue and doesn't add to the story at all other than invoking pederasty regularly. Finally, the narrator has a beautiful voice that has the same tone, tenor and pace in battle scenes, grieving scenes, sex scenes, making lunch scenes. So it's pretty bad.

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4 people found this helpful