I hadn't read any Octavia Butler before, and this became my what-I-read-while-volunteering-at-Boneshaker the last month or so. I thought the plot of Parable of the Sower was very engaging, but the narrator's attempt to shoehorn her own religion (Earthseed - primary belief: God is Change), was ham-fisted and detracted from the book's quality.
Parable of the Sower is set in the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area in the mid 2020s. American society/economy hasn't dramatically collapsed, but things have proceeded further down our current downward trajectory. Global warming has made water scarce in most places, very few jobs are available that actually pay money rather than just rent or company scrip, and most neighborhoods have walled themselves off from the outside world in order to prevent attack. Some sort of drug known as pyro results in a sex-like euphoria from setting fires, leading to many arsons. Slavery has returned.
The narrator is a teenage girl who has a physical empathetic response to others around her who are in physical pain, and wants to start a religion called Earthseed and eventually colonize Mars. Aside from items described in that sentence, most of the plot resides in a recognizable world. It ends up being a road trip book, and it's an entertaining read.
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