Octavia Butler's last book is a typically thoughtful and literary take on a what would more usually be a populist fiction story. The first person narrator wakes, badly injured and blind with no memory, kills and eats an animal and retreats to a cave to recover, a process which seems supernaturally rapid. She finds nearby the burnt remains of several buildings that may be where she came from, and the source of her injuries. 
 We learn, through the course of the first few chapters, that she is a young Ina - a non-human species that folklore knows as vampires and do, indeed, share many of their traits - and she is the only survivor of an attack on her family. 
 While there is some mystery - who is responsible for these murders, and why? - and action, the majority of this book is slower and more meditative than you might expect from that description, the plot a framework from which to hang ideas about race and gender, dominance and free will and sex. Butler asks some very uncomfortable questions and does not attempt to answer them all, and happily ignores boundaries of genre and literature.. This is a reminder of what a superb writer Butler was and how great the loss that we didn't have her for longer.