Listened to the audiobook with Kim Staunton – well read.

Octavia Butler herself named Kindred a fantasy story, but honestly it feels a little like cheating to upload a review of a novel like Kindred to our fantasy- and sci-fi-dedicated website.

Sure, the main character Dana travels through a portal to a past time and a different place, but that is no more than a contrivance to tell the story of a black woman from 1976 trying to survive at a plantation worked by enslaved persons in 1815.

That story is told expertly, though.

The introduction of a more-or-less present day character in such a different time gives Butler plenty of opportunity to confront the reader with just how different – and terrible – that time was. Because Dana is sometimes and outsider, Butler gets to reflect on some events at some distance. But as Dana spends more time in the past, she gradually get roped into the lives of the characters there and she experiences the harsh reality of being a black person on a plantation.

I’m no expert on 19th century American history, but I don’t get the impression that Butler held back much in her portrayal of the practice of slavery. I am sure she could have described much worse conditions without becoming unrealistic. But even if the Weylin plantation is not a representation of the very worst place to be as an enslaved person in America in 1815, Kindred can be difficult to read at times. It probably should be: I think Kindred has great educational value that way.

Kindred does not have a particularly special plot, and none of the time portal stuff is ever really explained. But it is thought provoking and has great characters, deep emotions, and a gripping story. And we have to give it to Butler: the why and how of the time portal might never be explained, but in true speculative fiction fashion, she does explain the rules of triggering it, meaning it never feels random.

I don’t have that much to say about Kindred as a work of speculative fiction – really, it is a literary historical fiction novel cosplaying as fantasy, and I don’t really feel qualified to comment on it from a literary perspective.

What I can say, though, is that I enjoyed the novel. It is not exactly a fun read, but it gripped me, and I hope it will grip you too.