"Bloodchild"

[fiefoe]

Octavia E. Butler famously called this her 'pregnant man' story, but I wasn't even thinking of gender when I was reading it. Starting with 'My last night of childhood began with a visit home', this is a coming-of-age-cum-alien-host-cum-love story. Butler's exposition is a marvel to behold - sure-footed and subtle. 

• Only she and her political faction stood between us and the hordes who did not understand why there was a Preserve - why any Terran could not be courted, paid, drafted, in some way made available to them.
• "That one ... she is always finding new ways for me to make her suffer."
• There was always a grace period between the time the host sickened and the time the grubs began to eat him.
• T'Gatoi bit away the egg case, licked away the blood. Did she like the taste? Did childhood habits die hard - or not die at all?
• She was paler and smaller than T'Gatoi - probably born from the body of an animal. Tlic from Terran bodies were always larger as well as more numerous.
• After that he concentrated on getting his share of every egg that came into the house and on looking out for me in a way that made me all but hate him - a way that clearly said, as long as I was all right, he was safe from the Tlic.
• "I wouldn't have shot you,"I said. "Not you." She had been taken from my father's flesh when he was my age.