What in the world was that!? Terrifying to say the least...

I still have difficulty rating this. From one side it is good because it is so bizarre. On the other side, some things (like rape) is been portrayed as Ok as long as it is not done by human to human but by the extraterrestrial beings to human. The more I think about certain sentences and the responses/reactions of the characters to this issue, it gets more disturbing and it could have easily earn the book 1 or even zero stars.

Nevertheless, I think that as disturbing as some issues in the book are, it still raises some important discussions such as what is it to be human and whether survival of the human race is worth pursuing, and at what cost?

I also find it interesting that the way the story is written makes the reader have difficulty not rooting for the Oankali (the captors) more than the humans in captivity by them. I got to feel disgusted and angry at the Oankali while at the same time sympathized with them.

It seems to me that humans are being portrayed as bad for no reason other than their flawed nature drives them to be bad; however, the Oankali are being portrayed as good. When is the Oankali who do what we as humans would consider bad, it has a specific seemingly good purpose, and it's supposed to be acceptable.