Fledgling by Octavia Butler

Fledgling is Octavia Butler's last published novel. Butler died shortly after its publication. Fledgling is a vampire novel, though it shares themes with Butler's other fiction.

Fledgling opens as a horribly wounded vampire is awakening in a cave. The vampire is so badly wounded that she has lost her memory in addition to being badly burned and beaten. The vampire is apparently a young black girl, and she begins trying to piece together her life, once she has overcome the worst of her injuries. She is picked up while walking along the road by a young man who finds her requests strangely irresistible. The young man's name is Wright, and he soon gives the young vampire the name Renee, which he tells her means reborn.

Renee asks Wright to help her find out what happened to her, so they begin their investigations by searching the area near the cave where Renee awakened. From their investigations, Renee learns that she is a genetically altered member of a matriarchal society called the Ina. The Ina are not vampires like Dracula; they are a separate species from humans. Renee also learns her real name, which is Shori. Each Ina gathers around themselves a group of human symbionts, which Shori had unwittingly been doing when she joined with Wright and then sought out other "blood donors" from among his neighbors.

The Ina and their human symbionts live in family compounds, usually in somewhat remote areas. They live in groups, segregated by Ina gender, because Ina females and males can't live together peacefully. Shori seeks out an Ina family group, so that she can work with them to find out what happened to her family.

The last half of Fledgling is a kind of detective story, in which Shori tries to find out who has been trying to destroy her (she determines that she was the real focus of the attacks) and seeks justice through an Ina "Council." A council is a kind of judicial proceeding, used by the Ina to prevent internecine feuds that includes both a trial and punishment.

Fledgling is an interesting vampire novel that is somewhat reminiscent of Whitley Streiber's The Hunger (and it's sequels.) It is also somewhat similar to Butler's Patternist novels, although the themes are worked out differently. Overall, it is a compelling book to read that has the strong characterization typical of Butler's work.