Shori wakes in the middle of the night to find that her community has been wiped out, and she is the sole survivor; she is suffering from amnesia, unable even to remember her own name. As she regains her memory, she discovers that she is not human at all, but a member of the Ina race -- a vampire.
The remaining members of her family are killed in a second attack, and Shori realizes that the attackers will not stop until they have killed her, too.
Are the killers humans who have discovered that Shori and her family are vampires? The culprits could be other members of the Ina, who oppose the experimentation Shori's family had been doing -- research that allows Shori to remain awake during the day and even to survive exposure to the sun.
Butler rings some interesting changes on traditional vampire legends in Fledgling. The bite of a vampire, for instance, does not turn a human into a vampire. It is, in fact, a pleasurable and ultimately addictive experience, and each Ina lives with a community of several human symbionts, each providing nourishment for their Ina roughly once a week. Ina society is highly organized, and its structure quite different from that of humanity.
Butler's a fine storyteller, and her prose is terse and clean. Her characters are well-rounded, and their interactions entirely convincing; she is particularly good at depicting the changing relationships among Shori and the family of symbionts she gradually assembles.
The ending of Fledgling is a bit rushed and anticlimactic, as Shori's attackers are brought to justice. There is certainly room for a sequel, and I would be happy to see one; now that Shori is apparently out of danger, her re-adjustment to life among the Ina would make an interesting story.
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