Lillith's Brood by Octavia Butler

Lillith's Brood (c. 1990 (compilation) c. 1987, 1988, 1989 for individual books) is a compilation volume containing three novels in the Xenogenesis series: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago. Although I knew I was reading a volume containing three novels while reading Lillith's Brood, the novels are so interconnected and the layout is so consistent that I really don't know which book made up which sections of the compilation.

With the book in hand, I can see that Dawn is the section that makes up the story of Lillith's awakening on the Oankali ship. The Oankali are an alien species that lives to "trade" with new species on new worlds. What makes them unusual (in science fiction that is--in the real world everything about them would be unusual) is that they trade genetic material. The Oankali have come to Earth after a major, worldwide disaster of manmade origin has left nearly everyone on the planet dead and the planet a smoking ruin. The Oankali salvage the living humans and seed the Earth with regenerative plants and animals.

Lillith Iyapo was a widow who had lost her husband and child to a car accident a year or two before the war that destroyed the Earth. In Dawn, Lillith awakes in an alien place and undergoes many unpleasant experiences before she is brought into contact with one of the Oankali. The Oankali are so frighteningly strange that Lillith can barely stand to be in the same room with her Oankali contact, and yet Lillith has been selected from among the salvaged humans as the most likely to be able to accept the Oankali. Lillith learns that she has been living on an Oankali spaceship since being salvaged. She also learns that the spaceship is alive, and that it is one of the many Oankali genetic creations.

Eventually, Lillith does come to accept the Oankali and is selected to be the human responsible for "awakening" 40 humans who will reseed the Earth. The catch is that they will be allowed to reseed the Earth only if they accept Oankali mates. The Oankali mate differently from humans. They mate for life and in groups of at least three--one male, one female, and one ooloi. Ooloi are neither male nor female, but they are the sex responsible for the genetic mixing between the males and females. They are capable of healing and of other forms of genetic manipulation, all of which is beneficial, according to Oankali understanding. The humans don't like the idea of Oankali genetic manipulation, even though some of them come to accept Oankali mates. Many humans reject Oankali manipulation of the human gene pool. They learn to hate Lillith, believing her to be a kind of Judas goat.

Adulthood Rites takes up Lillith's story and the story of the humans and the Oankali on Earth a few years after the end of Dawn. Lillith has joined with a group of Oankali and human families in a village called Lo. In fact, Lo is a village and also an immature space ship. The Oankali live in close connection to Lo, sharing genetic material with Lo and taking shelter and nutrition from Lo.

In Adulthood Rites, we see how Lillith and her human counterparts have come to live with and in opposition to the Oankali. The Oankali have made all of their salvaged human foundlings sterile, unless they mate with the help of an ooloi. Many groups of humans have left the shelter and assistance of Oankali family groups to make their own communities of resistors. The resistors can build homes and communities, but they cannot have children, so they have taken to raiding Human-Oankali villages and stealing children. Even though the children they steel are partly Oankali, they still look like children and are very valuable to the Resistors.

Akin is a male-looking child of Lillith and her mates Tino and Nikanj. Although Akin looks male, he is in fact a sub-adult, Human-Oankali construct, and as such won't become either sex until he reaches metamorphosis. Akin is, in fact, a male construct. The Oankali have been very careful to construct almost no male-leaning children to be born of Human females, because they consider the Human males to be too dangerously violent and hierarchical. What they come to learn, however, is that Akin was the hybrid they needed to fully understand the Humans. Akin convinces the Oankali to allow the Humans a place to develop a society where they can remain human and have human children. With his help, the Oankali come to understand that this outlet is necessary to the success of their plans. Akin starts a human outpost on Mars, with Oankali assistance, so that Resistors can have a place of their own and a hope for the future of the human race.

What neither the humans nor the Oankali and constructs realized was that the outlet of Mars allowed even the Oankali-mated humans, like Lillith, to let go of their anger towards the Oankali.

Imago takes up the story many years after the end of Adulthood Rites. Imago is the story of another of Lillith's children, Jodahs. Jodahs is the first ooloi born as a Human-Oankali construct. Imago is the story of what happens to Jodahs as he reaches metamorphosis and takes Human mates. Jodahs has 5 parents, a male and female Human, a male and female Oankali, and an ooloi, as is standard for Constructs. He also has a sibling Aaor, who has not yet reached metamorphosis.

As with Adulthood Rites, Imago is the story of how the Construct ooloi was necessary to bring the Human and Oankali species into peaceful coexistence.