Star War's Fan Edit: Palpatine Genes Prt 1: The Inspiration

The story of Dune is an intricate tapestry of plots and politics woven together with intriguing cultures and heavy philosophical ideology.  Every fight and every victory has huge sweeping consequences that ripple through a culture for generations.  

By contrast, the Star Wars series is a fun romp through an epic space fantasy.  The original three films charmed the childhoods of an entire generation, and those viewers passed their love of Luke, Leia, Han and Chewy on to their children.  

Creator George Lucas was inspired and heavily influenced by legendary works of fiction including the Flash Gordon series, Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, as well as Frank Herbert’s Dune series. 

Sprinkles of Dune's special seasoning is littered throughout the Star Wars universe.  It can be tasted in the heavy political plotting that reverberates through several generations, the diversity of cultures, the strong female characters, as well as a fascinating seed of science that can potentially connect the two vastly different stories.

 

George Lucas is no longer involved in the new Star Wars stories which have spun off from his original creation, and with his absence some of the Dune flavoring was lost.  

I believe Dune could have been of further inspiration, adding a dash of its spice to the weaker plot points of the Star Wars sequels that left so many fans disappointed.  

How?  What if Rey isn’t just Palpatine’s granddaughter.  What if she is his female clone which he had specially made to raise as his replacement?  He just needed his inferior clone reserves to keep him alive long enough for Rey to grow up and rise to power.    

Spoilers ahead for most of the Star Wars, as well as the first three Dune novels.  

The main thing that bothered me about Rise of Skywalker was its setup.  Somehow Palpatine returned.  Seasoned fans will have guessed within moments that he's simply using his clones to regenerate himself.  Though no longer official canon, Tom Veitch's six-issue comic series Dark Empire introduced this concept to Star Wars lore in 1991. Rise of Skywalker clearly used this concept for inspiration, but was uninspired in its implementation. A slew of what ifs spring to my mind, but the greatest of them is this; what if Rise of Skywalker had better used the ideas within Dark Empire, and then added a heavy sprinkle of inspiration from Dune?

To preface my idea I must make a couple of points first.  The first is that this isn’t entirely my idea. Frank said it first.   

 What does Dune Have to do with it?

 In Dune, Lady Jessica finds herself amongst the Fremen, natives of the desert planet Arrakis. To become their Reverend Mother, she must undergo the Spice Agony by consuming the Water of Life, a toxin created by a drowned Sandworm. This process awakens her ancestor memories, thus allowing her to look back and learn from the wisdom of her maternal/mitochondrial ancestors.  And she does this while pregnant with her daughter, Alia.  As a result, Alia is “pre-born”, born fully self-aware with a mature mind, and also filled with the memories of her ancestors long before she’s had a chance to develop her own personality.

Mitochondrial DNA is the common cellular chromosome that we all share with our mothers. It’s what ancestry trackers use to trace a person’s bloodline back through time. 

  

Alia’s mind  ages faster than her body.  She’s born a fully realized Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother but without any of the training needed to control her impulses, or focus her mind.  

She’s merely a child when she kills her own grandfather, the Baron Harkonnen, to defend her big brother Paul.  This allows Paul to establish his reign on Arrakis, but Alia is left vulnerable to her own hyper-sensitive mind.  

 Through two books Alia struggles with the voices in her head who are trying to take over her mind and body. She is an abomination and yet she is left in charge of Arrakis when Paul disappears into the desert.  

The only one that steps up to help her is the ghost of the long dead Baron Harkonnen.  

The Baron is able to speak directly to Alia’s mind because he is Jessica’s father, ergo Alia’s maternal grandfather.  The Baron’s personality possesses Alia:  he sleeps with her husband and her servants; he conspires to kill her niece, nephew, and mother; he takes over her guards.  Her potential victims look at Alia with pity instead of fear.  They know she is too far gone to be saved and too blind to be a real threat to them.  

Second: According to George, Palpatine was always cloning around.

When the plot of Star Wars is considered from the dark side point of view, it could be seen as the saga of Palpatine and his quest for immortality.  Every third Star Wars movie in the main series shows the rise, fall, and eventual success of Palpatine’s mission to escape death.  

At a young age Palpatine discovered that it was possible to gain immortality.  He’d heard stories of the dark side master who’d found the secrets he sought. Uncovering these methods for himself  became his personal quest.

Everything Palpatine did, from conquering the galactic government, to killing off the Jedi in order to unbalance the force in his favor, was to gain more power while he sought immortality.  He seduced the young Anakin Skywalker to be his apprentice easily because Anakin was also interested in this ability.  As the Emperor of the galaxy he’d had the resources to research and chase every lead.  

This research lead him to be interesting in cloning.  He'd learn by cloning himself he could make copies that he could then jump into when his current body died.  He didn't care about the clone army he'd created - only the information that could gained from the project.   

    

In Attack of the Clones The Jedi discover a factory already in the process of creating a clone army from the DNA of a man named Jango Fett.  Jango has agreed to this under one condition - that he be given one special clone that ages at a normal rate which he will raise as a son.  This boy grew up to become the legendary Boba Fett. 

This introduces the concept that such a clone, one with a slow healthy growth rate, is possible.  We learn later that Palpatine is behind the creation, training, and programing of this army as part of a plot to whip out the Jedi with the infamous Order 66.  

The new Disney animated series The Bad Batch reveals to us that the empire experimented with gender switching in clones.  One of the main characters of this story is a female clone created with the Jango DNA.

In Conclusion:  

Perhaps Palpatine ultimately learned that immortality was really a sort of ancestor hopping through time, probably by using midi-chlordans - or force molecules.  Such molecules might influence  the mitochondrial DNA of one’s descendants.  It would make since then that a female body would be able to pass this DNA on to her offspring, thus providing stronger vessels in the future for his soul to hop into.  

It therefore makes since to Palpatine's character to have experimented with these things and found out that they could be done.  So why not do them?  Having a female clone capable of carrying parts of his DNA into future generations could give him exactly what he's looking for.  He only had to be a little patient while his female clone grew to an independent adult and came looking for power.

  

Check out part two to see how I think this might have made for an interesting addition to the Star Wars lore.   

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Star Wars Sequel FanFic - Palpatine Genes Prt 2: The Rewrite

The Force Awakens:

We meet Rey, abandoned on Jakku.  She’s maintained hope for decades that someone would come back for her.  

Most of The Force Awakens plays out the same - with Rey meeting Finn who is escaping the storm troopers.  They run into Han and Chewy while escaping with The Millennium Falcon.  

Rey bonds with Finn, Han, and Chewy as they work together to fight thieves and fix the ship.  When she gets to meet the rest of the rebels, however, she becomes quiet.  She lacks social skills and she doesn’t do well in groups. 

She runs into Leia while trying to escape the crowd.  The famous force sensitive rebel princess can see her in ways no one has ever seen her before.  Rey is both drawn to and afraid of Leia.  Right away she wants to impress her.  Leia starts pulling up Rey’s buried memories - she can sense the pain and fear of being abandoned and feeling so alone.  Leia warns that such feelings are a path to the darkside.   They are  interrupted with news of a map leading to Luke Skywalker.

Rey jumps at the chance to get away from the group and do a mission on her own.  Finn, Han, and Chewy insist on going with her.  

“You don’t have to be alone anymore.”  

On this mission Rey demonstrates raw, untrained force abilities that are very destructive.  They cause concern in her friends and draw Kylo Ren’s attention.  

Kylo starts trying to pull Rey to the dark side. He uses past moments of destruction to make her feel even more alone. He says that he understands her. He tells her about his own destructive nature. She rejects this first temptation, then turns it on him.  She tries to draw him back to the light-side.  For a moment Ben Solo reacts to this tenderness.  Kylo rejects her violently.   Rey returns  to her friends with the key to finding Luke Skywalker.

Force Awakes ends with Rey still on the light-side but conflicted.  She is firmly bonded to Finn, Han, and Chewy.  She’s impressed Leia by showing that Ben is still alive inside Kylo.  Leia emotionally adopts Rey.  She feels at home for the first time and never wants to see Jakku again.

 However she’s still uneasy around the other rebels.  When they find the coordinates to Luke, Rey is happy to leave on her own.  This time R-2 wakes up and comes with her.  She likes droides and is happy for his company.

The Last Jedi:

Luke refuses to train Rey at first.  He detects the fear in her.  She assures him that she is only concerned about the fall of the rebel forces, but she fears nothing.  He doesn’t believe her.  

 Kylo confronts Rey via some weird force trickery.  They duel in front of Luke. Once again she tries to pull Kylo to the light-side, and once again Ben shows himself.  But the sight of Luke brings back Kylo and the connection is broken.  Luke sees that Rey is, at her a core, is good, honest, and  kind person.  She is worthy of being a warrior for the Light.  It’s obvious too that Kylo sees the potential in  her could be turned to the Dark Side.  Luke agrees to do more tests.  

He introduces her to the Dark Side Well on his sacred island.  Here is where Rey gets her first glimpse of what she could become if she gave in to her destructive nature. The seed Palapatine planted finally germinates.  

She comes out a little shaken but able to show cheer and fearlessness to Luke.  He trains her for a while.  But her training is interrupted, just as Luke’s was, by news that her friends are in danger.   Phasma has captured Finn and several other former Storm Troopers.  She is attempting to reprogram them all back into the soldiers they were.  They know things about the rebel forces that could get millions killed.

Under this torment Finn’s force powers blossom.  He calls out to Rey, Luke, and Leia. 

  Luke warns Rey that she is only partially trained and that she shouldn’t leave.  But she believes in her heart that Ben Solo can be saved and that Kylo can not be allowed to turn Finn to the Dark Side.  She leaves hoping to save everyone all by herself.

Once she’s around other rebels, in a crowd and without her friends, she starts hearing voices.  She starts hearing other people’s thoughts about her.  She’s un able to turn off the voices and becomes trapped in other people’s toxic opinions of her. 

   These voices  tell her that no one can trust her, that she’s a bad person, that she doesn’t belong with these people.  She fights it.  She wants to be good - do good.  But does she want to do good because it’s the right thing to do?  Or does she just want to be loved and respected?  How selfish of her.     The more she feels outcasted the more she behaves like an outcast - the more she shies away.   She isn’t listening to the instructions or the dangers.  She wants to be on a ship.  She’s looking for someone to blast.  

“How deliciously violent of you.”  

Someone lays a hand on her shoulder.  She lashes out at them.  As a result she accidentally wipes their memories.  The person is shocked and confused.  So is everyone else who witnesses this.  Rey apologizes but everyone looks at her more afraid than before.

Later we hear voice in her mind has become more familiar. It’s the crackly stale voice of an old man whispering evils into her mind. It shares visions of her being abandoned.  Some of these are not her true memories, but those of another little boy.  It opens her mind up to the minds of others.  She can hear people whispering about her, thinking about her.   

 Kylo asks her to join him during a battle over a prison ship that has captured Chewy.  He brings up Rey’s discomfort around the rebels and says he felt the same way.  He tells Rey that her skills for destruction would be valued on the Dark Side.  His words are  the same thing the voices in her head have been whispering.  Kylo then says that he knows who her parents are and why they left her.  

“They were filthy junk traders.  They traded you for drink money.”

 He’s trying to weaken her, but suddenly she’s more angry than anyone has ever seen her.  Lightening shoots from her fingers and the ship Chewy was on is destroyed.   Everyone witnesses his death. The are shocked that Rey just  killed their beloved Chewy with Palpatine’s old lightening finger trick.  

Fear consumes her.  She runs. The  old man is laughing inside of her head; she can’t escape him. 

Everyone is so stunned by the sight of Chewy’s ship that only Finn and Kylo run after her.  

Finn finds another Storm Trooper defect, a woman he met while being held by Phasma.  She has escaped the First Order and needs help.

 Rey is curled up into a ball hiding in the wreckage of a ship. Her mind is being taken over by Palpatine.  The audience can hear the struggle as  horrible visions of the past and present flood her mind - not all of them are her memories. Palpatine’s laughing voice takes over, drowning out Rey’s horrified screams. 

When she looks up Kylo Ren is there.  He offers her his hand.  The dream falls away.  The voice is silenced.  All she sees is Kylo.  For a moment she is herself again, but she is afraid. Rey takes Kylo’s hand.  He takes her trembling body into his arms and carries her, willingly, to his ship. 

The Imperial march plays as the credits roll.   

Rise of Skywalker:

 Chewy was actually on a different ship.  He’s alive but being held prisoner on a ship called the Black Star.  The rebels have a meeting to find a way to rescue him. He’s obviously bait in a trap. The rest of the rebel forces are busy.   A planet that has been friendly to their efforts is under attack.

“We can not spare our fighters to save one, when trillions are at risk!”

 Finn, Poe and Rose slip away on the Falcon to find Chewy. The others warn them that he is being held in the lair of the Shadow Empress.  No one who sees her can recall her face.  And no one taken to the Black Star ever returns.  

Poe trades the Falcon for a less familiar ship.   They use Rose’s skills as a mechanic and Finn’s knowledge of the First Order to get inside the Black Star base.     

Finn is able to get the gang into the prison where they set Chewy free.  Before they can get back to the ship Captain Phasma captures them.

The rescue party is brought before the throne of the Shadow Empress.  Their eyes are covered at first.  Then Kylo orders them to have their blinders removed.      They shout insults at Kylo as they believed that he killed Rey in the last movie.  

 The Shadow Empress appears. The gang react in shock and horror at Rey’s new outfit.  She explains that her new power to wipe memories has helped them recruit more troops than ever, even some of Finn’s new friends have been brought back to the fold.  She’s also been able to help the current soldiers sleep better at night with their minds whiped clean of the deeds they’ve done.  So the troopers are well rested, resolved of any guilt, and are much more dangerous.  They also have better armor, more like Phasmas,  so they are a much harder to defeat.     

They shout insults at her.  It makes her laugh in Palpatine’s voice.  He speaks directly to their minds.   

He tells them Rey’s back story:

 Rey’s backstory

 Palpatine researched the forbidden Dark-side methods of “Life Jumping”.  He figured out that he could only hop into bodies that are closely related to him.  His clones work but they are only temporary fixes as they age rapidly.  Palpatine had fathered no children.  Instead he had special clones made that would age more slowly.   

With more research he learned that a female body would carry with her the possibility of continuing his Mitochondrial DNA  into future generations.  Infinity was his at last.  So he made a female clone that would age slowly.  She needed to be put someplace safe in case something happened to all the others before she was ready for him.  

 Good thing to because the Skywalkers nearly ruined everything.  When the empire fell Rey’s caregivers fled.  They were not the most scrupulous people - after all they worked for Palpatine. They thought their meal ticket had dried up so they  traded Rey to Unkar Plutt on Jakku for drinking money as Kylo had told her.  

Learning the truth about her lineage and why she was abandoned, also that she was nothing but an intended vessel for the Dark Emperor - finally broke poor Rey’s spirts.  She lives in the shrunken place inside of her own psyche unable to control her own body as Palpatine prances around with her face, and runs his empire.

The only good she can do is to help the storm troopers forget their guilt and pain each night.  

Back to the story:

Her friends speak past Palpatine directly to Rey.  Finn shows that he’s discovered his force sensitivity.   Some part of  the real Rey surfaces but only for a moment.  Kylo and Finn sense the change before she is shoved back down.  Rose, Poe, and Chewy see nothing but the bubbling rage of yet another trader.  

Phasma escorts the prisoners to their cells to await torture and execution.   Before they are killed something strange happens.  The doors to their cells are opened and they have a clear path back to the Falcon.  Ben Solo has intervened and saved them.  He doesn’t like being married to Palpatine.  The reveal that she is still in there somewhere turns his heart and he has to try and free her.  

Finn refuses to leave without Rey, but the others think she’s a lost cause.  

Finn turns back and is captured and held by Ben.  The darkness in Rey has brought the clarity of the light back to Ben Solo.  Ben explains that Rey is fully possessed by Palpatine but killing her won’t kill him.  He has other clones.   But he is trapped as her husband - as Palpatine’s husband.  He doesn’t want to abandon her either.  

Finn presses to know why.  Kylo doesn’t answer but Finn figures it out.  

“She’s pregnant!?”  

“I have to be here to kill them both when the time comes.”

“There must be another way!”

Ben helps Finn escape the Empress’s lair but in doing so he is ousted as a trader.  

Ben and Finn must work together to help Rey find herself again.  

First they track down and destroy all the hives holding additional Palpatine clones on a planet called Biss.  They are well hidden but Ben had been spying on the Empress. He knows the location of the master control room which supplies the clones with life support.  They reach that and destroy every one of the tanks and the clone guards which protect them.

It’s sort of a fun let loose moment as these two heroes are allowed to destroy ever single living thing in this building, and blow up the buildings.    

As they travel together Ben is training Finn in the ways of the force so that when the Empress catches up to them again he will be better prepared.  

Together they lore Rey-patine to a sacred Force Temple which is heavy with Light & Dark side energies.  They bait her with the Darkness, but reveal their true location during the battle.   

Rey-patine easily out fights Finn physically.  But Ben balances the battle.  The proximity of the Jedi Temple helps Rey find the will to fight for her body and she joins the battle from within.  Finn holds Ben back from destroying Rey-patine for fear of the ghost jumping before the job is complete.  

Instead they speak kindly, gently to Rey.  They remind her of the love she has felt for them, and that they have felt for her.  They tell her that the rebels miss her.  This makes her laugh, but they continue even as Palaptain regains control over her, hisses opposing words of abandonment and betrayal.  

Then Ben asks Rey if she really wants Palaptain to raise their child.  

She fights with the love for her  unborn child.  She holds on to that desire to be a mother.   The real Rey is able to at last take control.  She warns Ben and Finn that besides her there is one body left.  One clone left to age slowly and return Palpatine to youth.  She tells them vaguely where to find it.  Then she submerges to do battle with the Emperor in her mind.  

Finn leaves to tell the rebels about the “weapon” he’s discovered.  Poe, Rose, and Jannah accompany him in his search but he doesn’t tell them exactly what he’s looking for.   The coordinates lead them to a house with a family in a poor slum of a city planet.  Finn tries to detect where the body might be but he senses nothing.  

Rey remembers kindness.  She remembers meeting Finn, and their adventures.  Then she remembers Leia and her kindness towards her.  Leia who was a mother to her, and wrapped her in the light no matter how much others were afraid of her.  She remembers the embarrassing moments with the women in the rebellion as funny.  She laughs away moments that were shameful.  She forgives herself for feeling so lonely among potential friends.  She feeds that warm glow to her baby.  It feeds love and trust back to her.  

Palpatine hisses hatred and fear at her.  He demands that she focus on her hatred for him.

She turns that kindness towards him instead.  

“I pity you really.  You’ve been in my mind.  But I’ve been in yours.  I’ve seen what made you - what  filled you with so much anger.”   

Palpatine’s dark and terribly tragic childhood plays before his own eyes.  He is brought to his knees weeping and powerless as she walks him further and further into the Light Side of the sacred temple.

 She shows him tenderness as he ages before her mind’s eye.  She embraces him and calls him grandfather.  She cries for his pain and his suffering.  He can’t handle the agony of the Light side flooding him.  He is taken back to that sad and terrible childhood where only horrible things ever happened to him.  She says 

“I forgive you.”

Palpatine cries out.  He flees from her mind and her body.  She can since that he is gone, totally gone.  

When she emerges from her trance she finds the ghosts of ancient Jedi holding the still struggling old man between them.  

“You’ve purged the evil from your blood.  We’ll take it from here”

“We’ll keep this one imprisioned here where he can do no harm to anyone else for an eternity.”

“But what about his other clone?” Rey asks.

“It’s fate is yet to be decided.  The choices it will make will determine it’s future.  

“Perhaps a guide can steer it away from the Darkness.”

“Perhaps not.”

Finn sences the presence of a force sensitive being.  He runs away from Rose and Poe, prepared to strike down he last clone.  But when he finds it he discovers that it is only a ten year old boy.     

 

Rey rejoins Ben and assures him that she and their baby are safe with a kiss.    Finn communicates that he’s found the last clone.

Rey and Ben race to meet Finn.  When he introduces them to the boy child Ben instinctively reaches for his lightsaber.  The moment reminds him of his master Luke Skywalker raising a saber to kill him.  He remembers the darkness that flooded his soul in that moment.  He pauses.

Rey steps forward and asks the boy who he is and where he’s from.  He’s a slave as is his family.  He is another cast off clone left to live a hard life, forgotten by all.  His past is very similar to the young Anikan Skywalker.  Rey takes pity on him and shows him compassion.  She sets him free, and his parents, and all the slaves they are with.  She then vows to the boy that she will work to end slavery in the galaxy.  She  takes the young boy under her wing as a charge to make sure he knows kindness in his life.  

He will live with his loving parents.  But Rey, Finn, and Ben check on him and watch over him.    

 

In conclusion

This isn’t my usual content.  This blog is for reviews and essays about books that influenced me, not movie re-writes.  I just had to get this idea off my chest.  This is how I would have written the sequel trilogy, please share your thoughts and comments down below.  Tell me what you would have done differently.  

Did you like Rise of Skywalker?  

Tell me about your favorite Star Wars experience!

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Review: Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

   Enough has been said about the uncomfortable sex of this novel.  Octavia Butler has a reputation of showing odd sexual relationships between non-traditional couples:  interracial couples (Kindred), inter-species relationships (Lilith’s Brood) and now this pseudo-pedophilic relationship between a man and a fifty year old child-like vampire.    

    I really wish Octavia E. Butler alive today to talk about it.  I suspect it may have something to do with her own life as a lesbian in the eighties.  She confessed once in an interview that she’d never been in love.  Maybe that is why she could take our imaginations to such dark places unflinchingly.  

There is more to this story than the age of vampires and how she gets her meals.  One reviewer described the beginning of the story as a birth.   We are with her from the moment she regains consciousness.  She’s in a dark smelly cave, overcome by pain and instinctual hunger.  She has push her way out into the world from the depths of Earthen cave that has sheltered her during a period of healing and growth.  But when she stands up she is alone.  She blind from left over fear, and hunger.  She is an animal and moves on instinct to kill and feed because her body demands it.  In the dark of night she is bloody, hurt, and savage.  She moves without thought.  But she isn’t afraid.  She doesn’t know enough to be afraid, only confused.  

    She finds a place that she knows is important.  We later learn that it is the home of her mothers.  The women who have should have been taking care of her, showing love and society, have been butchered and burned.  Their homes are ash.   She seeks comfort among the rubble though she has lost all memory of this place and these people.  

  It will be several chapters before she learns of her profound loss; she has no memory of her infancy, her childhood nor her mother and family . She has lost everyone who could love and take care of her.  She has lost the memory of maternal affection and paternal protection.  She of love and family - she’s even lost all the people who could help her remember them.  Even the relics that might jar a memory have been burned, crushed, and destroyed.  

Who could hate someone so much as to take something so precious?

As usual Octavia has masterfully found a way to use the metaphors of horror to paint a picture of the experience of black people.  We have lost all memory of history and ancestry.  Our ancestors were taken ripped from their home lands.  They were forced to forget their religions, their cultures, their homes.  They weren't allowed to sing their songs or own their own memories.  Their children were taken, and their families shuffled so that the stories couldn't even passed down through the generations.  

Who could hate an entire people so much as to take something so precious?

The Fledgling is reborn at the cusp of adolescence.  The first person  to help her becomes her first meal.  We learn later that he would have taken her to her father had she not been so hurt and blinded by hunger.  

    The second person to help her becomes her mate.  She’s calmer now, and able to think.  Her ‘humanity’ has returned - emerged from the ravenous beast she was hours ago.  But her body is still in control.  She conquers him without being aware that she can do so.  All she knows is that she's hungry and that she needs help.  She enslaves him without thought.  

Some find this a slow beginning but Octavia uses the opening chapters of savagery to greater affect later in the book.  It is the Fledgling's monstrous nature, her strength that keeps her alive after the attack, her instincts that keep her safe.  But it will be this emerged ‘humanity” that will be called into question later on.  

She begins, on instinct to seek out more people to gather into her new family.  The morality of it isn’t so much her concern at first.  She feeds on the man who would help her.   The man is a good guy.  A large white man named Wright who sees - what looks like - a twelve year old black girl walking down the street hurt and alone.  He picks her up so a creep won't harm her.  He has no idea that she's the monster.  She drugs him with her venom and makes him her first simbiot.  He is now addicted to her because she needs him to be.  

Octavia uses this relationship to call love itself into question.  Is it simply chemical hormone in the brain?  Something we produce because humans are afraid of being alone, and because we need each other? The withdrawal symptoms are real enough.  The Fledgling, Renee, (later called Sori)  needs Wright like a bee needs nectar.  Thanks to evolution of her species she has a way to make him enjoy the experience of feeding her - which happens to be sexual.  In this way she gathers Wright, Theodora (an older woman) and a few others into a family of feeder humans she calls symbiotes.  

Wright is a tall, heavy bodies white man.  Sori is fifty year old vampire teenager who looks like a twelve year old.  Octavia chose possibly the most volatile combination for this pairing that she could think in the eyes of her readers.   Even I found myself making Wright a black man in my head to make it fit better somehow.  Octavia did it to make a statement, not to just make the readers squirm.  Sori is a child even the eyes of other vampires - but she’s old enough to start choosing her feeders and her choices are respected by the others of her kind.  

    The other vampires, or in this story beings known as Ina,  have lived among humans for thousands of years.  They believe themselves to be different, separate, more highly evolved than humans.  They don’t bat an eye at the age and races of her symbiotes.  It’s Sori herself that raises the conflict.  She is a black Ina, born from an African American mother.  She is the next step in their evolution; an Ina that can walk in sunlight.

It brings to mind two modern vampire stories:  Wesley Snipe's character in Spawn and  ______ from "Interview With a Vampire".  She was a child when she was bitten by and transformed into a vampire.  She takes to it right away loosing all memory of her former life as well.  She becomes a vicious and unapologetic  hunter using her youthful appearance to lore in pedophiles and well meaning adult humans alike.  Mentally she matures sexually, but her bodies stays that of a child.  She even tries a few times to seduce adults for pleasure.  She does not enjoy her existence.  She flirts with older vampires but any actual interest is vague or non existent.  Is this more acceptable?  Is it better to hate what she is and curse her creators, even try and kill the one who turned her?  Is it better that she accepts behaving child-like in order to gain a new caregiver?  

    Or is it better to be Sori, to learn what you are and accept it.  To do what needs to be done for survival, because she isn’t hurting anyone. Sori will grow up now, despite her set back.  But she will never regain the memories of her past.    Sori goes out of her way to not hurt others, even once she’s captured one of the attackers she is kind to him, patient with him.  She feeds him and talks to him gently.   She uses empathy to get information from him.  She wants to rip him apart, but she recognizes that his actions are not his own.

   His actions are not his own.  He’s being compelled by one who can control his mind, his thoughts, his body.  She doesn’t want the servant.  She wants the master. This is an elaborate show of her “humanity” her “civility”.  We come to find out that it’s these very displays of compassion that will save her at the end.  

    Sori through this interview and some other detective work learns that it’s another family of Ina who have erased her family, all in a direct attempt to erase her.  Her family had been experimenting with mating with humans - not just any humans but humans of African decent.  Their experiments had born her and her brother.  Ina who could walk in the sun.  Ina who were not as inbred, and fragile looking as the others.  She and her brother were stronger, faster, and more cunning.  

    The tension of the story comes from this prejudice as Sori tries to prove that race was the motivation for the murder of her kinsmen.  She has to calmly, marshal her own rage when she has been so incredibly hurt, to prove that she is not the savage. 

    The culprits deny their actions at first.  They claim ignorance but their hatred of her very existence reveals them.  They try to anger her so that she will lash out, prove her lack of civility.  This reminded me of how many times I’ve had to keep my cool at work because white managers, and customers who wanted a reason to have me fired thought they could bring my "natural savagery".  They expected me to “act black” to curse and swear and stomp and threaten.  But I didn’t, and the result is always them looking like the assholes.  

This also reminds me of the more recent trails that have been in the news of late.  Of cops and other white people trying to justify their killing of unarmed black men.  They always say they their feared their lives, and didn't have a choice.  They always justify it by way of the victim's natural savagery.   The very strength, endurance and physical ability that drove the white slavers to still our ancestors, bring them to the Americas and breed them like cattle are the same traits they use to justify killing us today.  

    Sori remains calm.  She holds her composure until she finds the right line of questioning.  Then it all comes pouring out - racism disguised as civility; purism so strong one of the defenders is willing to die rather than live in the same world were Sori exists.  Fear of white genocide shown for it’s true ugly nature.  

Why hate someone so much when you don’t know anything about them except the color of their skin?

In my opinion this is where Octavia’s skill as a storyteller shines. 

The third act of the story is comprised of a very formal trial to ferret out the clan responsible for the death of Sori’s entire family.  It’s all court lingo and trails but it’s still quiet the page tuner.  I was on the edge of seat, yelling at characters in the book, and begging Sori to remain calm.  It’s even relevant to readers today because it feels like even once the guilty party is found out they may not suffer any serious consequences.  The Ina consider themselves above all that human stuff.  But Octavia throws us a bone recognizing that the ax must fall.  The stakes are too high by this point.  Sori is even attacked during the trail and one of her beloved symbiotes is killed right there while under the protection of the governing house. 

Butler kept me turning pages eager to see how the conflict would be resolved.  Would justice be served?  Or would Sori have to deal with it in her own way.  

    

    The crux of the story is about race, but not for the sake of racism.  It is about what the racists fear, what they are fighting against.  And why their battle is a loosing one.  "Embrace diversity or be destoryed" ~ The Books of the Living.

The purpose of the Ina experiment that created Sori was to introduce biodiversity to the Ina blood.  As it stood the existing families had been mixing and matching for so long that each family was related to every other.   In all that time their long lives  were plagued by sunlight and gradual deterioration.  With Sori and her brother more genetic diversity was introduced along with the brown skin capable of resisting sunlight for longer.  Sori also seems to be faster, stronger, and more able than the others expected.  She’s able to avoid three massacrers aimed at destroying everything about her.

Throughout the trial Sori is tasked with proving her civility to the people who killed her family.  She has to prove that she is equal to the other Ina mentally, physically, and psychologically all while they are calling her awful names, and denying their responsibility for her homelessness.  

Their motivation for this is to prove the opposite. of course.  Fear of this darker skin and the enhancements of biodiversity would make their families “unrecognizable”.  They believed that Sori being part human and part black human at that, would be somehow primitive and backwards.  They push her to limit to prove that she is a savage on the inside.  And when she manages to still talk to them with civility they use even that against her to show her lack of empathy and emotion and for her loss family. They claim that the very actions that should have killed her may have damaged her beyond usefulness, may have caused her to be defective.  So naturally Sori’s contribution to their gene pool would be nothing but a step down lowering the quality of their  race or species.  

They are fighting loosing battle as are all who think as they do.  The diversity of the blood makes it stronger.  The mixing makes it more adaptable to genetic disease and fills the blanks left by careful breeding.  The old families are dying off in this story.  The houses destroyed by war or lost to time have caused the blood lines to shrink even further.  Sori is the future.

As a result at the end of the story many of the males who have seen her hold herself upright against the assaults, and fend off attackers are interested in becoming her mate.  She has her pick of the liters and will become the mother to a whole new type of Ina, one more adaptable, and probably more dangerous than any the world has seen previously.