Writers of Color 50 Books Challenge

I read the Patternmaster books years apart and Clay's Ark last, and I was so overwhelmed by the sheer brutality of the novel that it's taken me more or less until now to fully make the connection between the inevitable end of humanity with which it ends and the post-human future of Patternmaster (which I haven't reread since I first read it a long time ago). It is actually kind of a relief to remember that Butler was *going somewhere*, because while I have always loved the hard insistence on confronting violence in her books I think that this series and this novel in particular (Mind of My Mind second) are the hardest of all. It's like she realized the implications of the world she made for Patternmaster and used them to show how nasty the real world manifestations of these commonplace sf ideas would bd.

I second the recommendation/warning to prepare a comfort reread for after Clay's Ark. I am glad I read it, but this book flayed me.