I thought this story was very interesting because the aliens, Oankali, aren't planning on destroying earth but rather rebuilding, healing and saving it. Although the Oankali's way of saving humanity is to breed with it and create this new/better race of being through having 3 different sexes. Lilith is their chosen human to start the breeding process and better understand the human race. She is weary at first of doing this but she warms up to the idea and decides to go through with it.
The way humanity is portrayed in this book is pretty disturbing, but I guess it is understandable because it is supposed to be set in post apocalyptic times. Men are basically barbarians who claim women as prizes and women are pretty low on the totem pole. In that sense the aliens are pretty smart for choosing a woman as their first means of breading. By choosing Lilith they give her a new lease on life because if she returns to the human world she is just a woman but as the mother of the new race she holds so much more importance and respect. Neither the aliens or the humans are seen as villains in the book however, to me it seems a bit like the aliens are heros and humans are the bad guys because they made a mess of themselves and have turned into this disgusting barbaric society.
The concept of a third sex, ooloi, is also very interesting to me because it sort of hints at the aliens sort of raping men and women. For example, the Oankali have "power" over the humans and they can coax them to do as they wish and mate with each other once they "linked in" to a human man or woman. Maybe it is a very fine line of raping and consent because they induce them to feel a certain way and it isn't forced, yet the humans would not feel that way unless the ooloi had made them feel that way first.
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