We first met Lauren Olamina in *Parable of the Sower*, and her vision and determination stayed with me for weeks. *Parable of the Talents* picks up right where we left off, and somehow Octavia Butler makes the stakes even higher. Lauren has made it out of the chaos of *Sower* with a small community, a shared belief system she calls Earthseed, and a fragile sense of hope. The America of *Talents* has found its strongman — a politician running on "Make America Great Again" (!) whose followers...