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comes from. She quickly learns that she is not a young human girl but a genetically altered vampire. Her black skin allows her to survive sunlight and remain alert during the day, but she faces grave danger from those threatened by her strength and heritage. Accompanied by several human hosts who feed and love her, Shori tries to protect her new family and friends from an increasingly hostile threat. Some readers may find Shori's sexual relationship with her adult hosts offensive, as she has the appearance of an 11-year-old girl. This is Nebula Award winner Butler's (Parable of the Sower) first novel in seven years; the conclusion suggests it is likely the start of a series. Recommended for all public libraries. [Butler's collection of short fiction, Bloodchild, will be reissued with two new stories in October.-Ed.]-Devon Thomas, Hass MS&L, Ann Arbor, MI

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middle-aged vampire, in this suspenseful novel from Butler, her first in seven years. Shori wakes up horribly injured and starving, knowing only that she needs to feed, preferably on blood, and that she doesn’t necessarily want to kill anyone. Once she’s drunk someone’s blood – as quickly happens with Wright, a man who picks her up on the side of the road – that person becomes tied to her in a relationship that’s closer to love than it is to slavery, though it’s an uncomfortable mix of the two. Soon, Shori meets other vampires, a millennia-old race who call themselves the “Ina.” She starts to drink the blood of humans (whom the Ina call “symbionts” and regard as children, or lovers). She discovers that she’s a unique Ina, the product of a genetic experiment using human DNA that makes her able to withstand sunlight (her African-American pigmentation helping her do so). This unique status appears to be why someone killed her Ina family and their symbionts, and why she is herself being hunted. Butler (Bloodchild and Other Stories, 1995, etc.) effortlessly navigates what are pretty queasy waters, what with Shori’s frank and carnal relationship with her symbionts, complicated by her looking like a ten-year-old girl when in fact she’s 53. Racist fears of miscegenation are also given an interesting spin in a story so convincingly told, via Butler’s hardboiled yet emotional prose, that one is likely to forget that it’s about vampires. A finely crafted character study, a parable about race and an exciting family saga. Exquisitely moving fiction.

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arm.

The much-lauded Butler creates vampires in her 12th novel (her first in seven years) that have about as much to do with Bram Stoker’s Dracula as HBO’s Deadwood does with High Noon. They need human blood to survive, but they don't kill unless they have to, and (given several hundred years) they'll eventually die peacefully of old age. They are Ina, and they've coexisted with humans for millennia, imparting robust health and narcotic bliss with every bite to their devoted human blood donors, aka "symbionts." Shori is a 53-year-old Ina (a juvenile) who wakes up in a cave, amnesiac and seriously wounded. As is later revealed, her family and their symbionts were murdered because they genetically engineered a generation of part-Ina, part-human children. Shori was their most successful experiment: she can stay conscious during daylight hours, and her black skin helps protect her from the sun. The lone survivor, Shori must rely on a few friendly (and tasty) people to help her warn other Ina families and rediscover herself. Butler, keeping tension high, reveals the mysteries of the Ina universe bit by tantalizing bit. Just as the Ina's collective honor and dignity starts to get a little dull, a gang of bigoted, black sheep Ina rolls into town for a species-wide confab-cum-smackdown. In the feisty Shori, Butler has created a new vampire paradigm—one that's more prone to sci-fi social commentary than gothic romance—and given a tired genre a much-needed shot in the arm. (Oct.)