Survivor by Octavia E. Butler (book review).

Octavia Butler wrote five Patternist novels. The earlier books explore the long history that eventually leads to the Patternist society, including the life and influence of Doro. He was born human many centuries in the past and discovered that he could transfer his consciousness into someone else’s body. If he was in a fight, he could win easily enough simply by switching bodies. Anyway, he developed a breeding programme intended to produce people with increasingly powerful abilities, although eventually one of their number became strong enough to challenge him.

The opening books were superb, while the fifth was set far in the future, but I’d never read the fourth, Survivor, until now. Headline has re-released it, having originally been published in 1978. Headline is currently re-releasing a lot of Butler’s books, and she was quite prolific.

Considering that the start of Survivor is on Earth, where a feral child is taken in by Missionaries and named Alanna ‘Lanna’ Verrick, and we see how she behaves amongst them, you do have to wonder what this has to do with the Patternist reality. A few chapters in, the connection becomes clearer through the legacy of the Clayark disease and the wider Patternist universe.

Now rather more civilised, Alanna accompanies the Missionaries to Garkohn, a planet with its own intelligent species, who aren’t particularly keen on them. We don’t really see what these ‘Missionaries’ actually do, so the name is a bit of a misnomer. The Garkohns introduce them to the native fruit, meklah, which is instantly addictive. These native species are also warriors at heart and, after one battle, Alanna becomes a captive who is taught their ways and brought into their tribe. She becomes the lover of Diut, initially for protection and eventually through love. We then follow their lives from both of their viewpoints.

One of Butler’s strengths is writing believable characters. Here, she does the same with the complex Garkohn society and its social hierarchy, where relationships are constrained by status, who the warriors are, especially amongst the women, and who it is unwise to annoy. Alanna, having once been feral herself, adapts to this life because she can be just as dangerous.

The Garkohns are a hairy species whose changing colour reveals their status. Blue is cool, while red denotes the warrior class. As we see their society through Alanna and Diut’s eyes, you gradually develop an understanding of what they are and how their culture works.

The book also contains the novelette ‘A Necessary Being’, first published posthumously in 2014. This story focuses again on the Garkohns. The Rohkohn, or land people, spot three travellers passing through their territory. Their judge and leader, Tahneh, orders them captured, although not too overtly, because her people need to find themselves a new Hao, or leader.

The travellers turn out to be Tehkohn, or mountain people: Diut and his companions, the married Jeh and Cheah. Diut finds that he has to prove his worth as a combatant before he can work his way towards leadership.

I think Butler wanted another opportunity to explore her aliens, this time more from the inside. There are some parallels with terrestrial primates, but taken to greater extremes, particularly with the colour of their fur changing according to status and emotion. I think I was thrown by their acceptance of fighting to the death without reprisals, but these are warrior tribes, or rather societies containing specific warrior castes, with judges of either sex making the important decisions.

Everything is extremely segregated according to age and position, assuming you live long enough to acquire either. It’s certainly a different take on the traditional alien society.

You can read this book as a standalone if you want a study of alien life, although you’d have to be pretty brave to want to live amongst them.

GF Willmetts

August 2026

(pub: Headline, 2026. 287-page hardback. Price: £20.00 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-03-544422-9)

Check out the website: www.headline.co.uk/titles/octavia-e-butler/survivor/9781035444229/