Leigh Kimmel’s Reviews > Lilith's Brood > Status Update

Saying goodbye to a beloved place, full of memories but now in ruins, thanks to the cruelty of others.

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.