Though the microorganism and its symbiotic relationship with its human hosts is vastly different from the centuries of breeding conducted by Doro to develop specially-gifted humans, both groups face challenges in terms of building communities and how to interact with society outside their communities. Clay serves as the bridge between Mind of My Mind and Clay’s Ark, but he’s only a minor character in the former and is mentioned in passing as the originator of the mission the Clay’s Ark ship was conducting.Ĭlay’s Ark does share themes with the rest of the Patternist series, chiefly themes related to identity. There is no direct character overlap with the other books (at least, not that I’m aware of yet perhaps Jacob or Zera show up in Patternmaster). The narrative structure creates enough inherent conflict and thematic resonance without assistance from the other books. More so than the other novels in the Patternist series (I’m assuming as I still have one official book in the series left to read), Clay’s Ark stands on its own.

Facing many of the same ethical questions about what can and should be done, the parallel timelines highlight the struggle to a sense of identity and humanity as the world and society slowly disintegrate. The present timeline follows a father and his two daughters as they are kidnapped by that astronaut and the small colony of infected individuals he’s established to protect the larger population from the disease.

The past timeline documents the return of an astronaut from the Clay’s Ark spaceship as he struggles with the alien microorganisms that have invaded his body as a disease and compel him to infect other humans.

It’s all confusing, but don’t worry because the books themselves aren’t.Ĭlay’s Ark is told in two timelines. But from what I can tell based on the order the novels were written (rather than the chronology of how they’re set, which is the order I’ve been reading them in), Clay’s Ark bridges the gap between the first two books and Patternmaster, the final novel (which was actually written first). Where there was significant overlap between those first two novels, Clay’s Ark is only very tangentially related to the first two. I’m not sure what to expect from it either, since Clay’s Ark was so far from where either of the first two, Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind were. I only have one more novel left in Octavia Butler’s Patternist series now that I’ve finished Clay’s Ark.

Doro octavia butler