Leigh Kimmel > Recent Status Updates

Leaving home and taking precautions. The difficulty of avoiding touch when one's neurology is exquisitely tuned to communication via touch, including very complex information via neural induction. But when touch can become deadly, the pain must be endured until one can master one's abilities so they help rather than harm.

Jodahs prepares to leave home and kin, trying to protect others from harm yet craving the very touch that can lead to doing harm.

Jodahs tries to isolate from Lo's substance with a pile of branches -- which Lo promptly eats, viewing the act not as protection, but rejection.

Some particulars on what an ooloi can do, and how it can become dangerous.

A discussion of what an ooloi can do, and why it's so important for an ooloi to be in full possession of all one's capacities. A discussion between parent and child that's oddly intimate without being at all icky, because it's so *alien*.

Talking about metamorphosis, the Oankali organelle, and other things peculiar to the Oankali and what they have brought to Earth and Humanity.

Our protagonist's struggles with sense of gender -- something that Oankali develop only at metamorphosis (their version of puberty), but human genes in the construct children have complicated the usual pattern of development.

Akin goes through metamorphosis, becoming far more Oankali in appearance -- perhaps feeling a need to reassure the Oankali in order to push the Mars option. Now the final volume, Imago, as Jodahs comes of age. Unlike the other two, which are written in third person, this one is written in first person.

An arson attack, apparently by hardliners who regard any offer by the Oankali as inherently tainted.

Akin begins emerging on the other side of metamorphosis, looking much more Oankali than his very human appearance as a child. Being in a resister village now puts him in grave danger -- but already some of them are excited about the idea of a Human future on Mars

Akin returns to old friends and acquaintances, tries to heal someone who once protected him, and is badly interrupted. Now he's thrust into metamorphosis unready.

Akin returns home to find that home has become strange to him. Awaiting his metamorphosis, when he will finally become an adult and be accepted as such -- after he discovers that he was made specifically to be a go-between with the resisters.

Learning more about the ship -- and dealing with the changes that resulted from having been separated from his closest sibling during the critical bonding period, time that can never be regained.

Back to the ship, but now we see it through the eyes of those who have known Oankali biotechnology all their lives. And these are young people struggling to grow into adult roles -- after their lives have been disrupted and they no longer fit neatly into the places they were expected to have.

Akin and the other children awaiting their metamorphosis into their adult forms -- and their struggles with conflicting desires.

Tino's continuing struggles with identity and loyalty. Akin will go up to the ship to see more of his Oankali heritage, after so much time with raw humanity, struggling to keep itself unchanged, or as they see it, unpolluted.

Tino struggles with his feelings of having betrayed his home, yet his strong connection to Lo and the Oankali.

The Oankali find Akin, but it's not the joyous reunion and happily ever after that another writer might give us. Akin has been changed by his time among the resisters, and can't just go back to his old way of life. And no, the adults are not happy at this discovery.

The other two children flee, but Akin remains, trying to learn as much about the resisters as he can, so that he can plead their case for a saving remnant, so that Humans will continue to exist if the Oankali gene trade proves disastrous for Dinso. That Humans are discounted when they argue, but he's part Oankali, so he may get listened to.

Akin has been warning about the harm that will be done to the younger kids by trying to remove their sensory tentacles. Now he's warning a trusted adult of the danger to anyone who attempts it -- that Oankali have a deadly sting (reminiscent of cnidarians) and constructs' tentacles also possess the ability.

Akin among the Resisters, as Lillith continues to work with the Oankali to find him.

More horrific violence, as the raiders and the residents of Phoenix get into some kind of fight -- all seen from Akin's POV, so motivations are left obscure because unreliable narrator. Meanwhile, back at Lo, Lillith and the Oankali are trying to find out what's going on -- and the discovery that Earth will be consumed in the process of launching the two new living spaceships.

Akin is taken to various settlements, ending at Phoenix -- and an ugly fight. Meanwhile, back at Lo we have the miracle of birth, Oankali-style.

Akin's anguish as a captive, unable to understand why people would choose to live this way, simply because they hate the Oankali so much. That one would rather die than ask an ooloi for healing.

Akin is kidnapped by the resisters, who brutally attack Tino and leave him for dead. One of the male Oankali find Tino, and is now getting an ooloi who can heal him.

Tino takes Akin with him on a woodcutting expedition.

Human oncogenes enabled the Oankali to totally revolutionize their healing processes -- and people with oncogenes are like catnip to ooloi, the agender "third sex" that is critical to their method of reproduction.

The Oankali explain just how badly the war damaged Earth's biosphere, what they have done to restore it as best they can -- and how dangerous some of the resisters are.

More discussion about the construct children, and how they differ from old-school human children.

More discussion of the relationship between human and Oankali. Unpleasant discoveries by those who didn't have the background to live in the jungle, like fruit that is poisonous when raw but wholesome when cooked (heat breaks down the toxins).