Fledging tells the story of a 53 year old child vampire who has to rediscover herself, relearn what and who she is as well as the customs and protocols of the society she belongs to. The novel starts when she wakes up badly hurt and with amnesia inside a cave. She wanders around and hunts wild animals to satiate her hunger. She is later rescued by a man, Writgh, who saw her walking on the road. He is worried for her and tries to take her to a hospital or the police. She doesn't want to go to any of those places although she doesn't know why. She tries to escape and he grabs her. She ends up biting him.
No, she doesn't kill Wright but loves sucking his blood. Wright doesn't panic but is surprised by the pleasure this girl has given him. The young vampire asks the man to help her find out who she is and he accepts right away. This is the start of a bizarre relationship. This is more than weird but I guess this is what vampires do with their prey. She needs Wright for food and protection and he needs her because he is attracted to her in more than one way. To start their search they go back to were the vampire child woke up. They explore a ruined, burnt house and later find her father. He calls her Shori and takes the couple with him to his house hold. There she learns that her mothers and sisters died in a fire and that she is the only survivor. He wants her to live with him now but she is not sure and wants to go back to Wright's house to think. Little did she realise that this would save her life again as her father and brothers are killed in a other house fire.
Opinion: this is not what I expected. I have read other science fiction novels by Butler and thought this one would have a scifi twist. No. I also assumed this could be a horror story and I was wrong. I can't complain though. This is a well written, well tought out vampire story. Butler reconfigures the vampire mythology in an intelligent and interesting way. She creates and ancient society with history, customs, traditions and norms that has coexisted with humanity without being discovered. She creates the symbionts, humans who willingly live with vampires, in remote locations. Symbionts are used for their blood but in return they are given healthy longer and comfortable lives. Their relationship with vampires is odd to say the least. Some sort of sexual partners, who are also family and friends but with whom they cannot procreate as they belong to different species.
I found most of the charactees interesting especially Shori. She is well constructed, growing and learning from start to end. The relationships between vampires and symbionts were hard to swallow at the beginning. Particularly Shori's. She is an underage vampire child who is not ready to mate yet but who has sexual desires (for vampires and humans). However this is well accepted in her society.
On the negative side, I found the first half of the novel not that interesting. Yes, we follow Shori in her learning process and we see her doing nasty things but the reason for all this to happen is not clear until the last few chapters. And this was not a plot twist. It was more like filling a hole in the story for me. All the elements of social criticism are justified and make sense but I wanted more before the end.
My edition was published in 2007 by Grand Central Publishing. It has 310 pages.
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