Imago (Lilith's Brood Book Three)

The concluding book in Octavia E. Butler's devastatingly original Lilith's Brood trilogy.

Child of the Earth and stars, Jodahs can shapeshift, heal the maimed, cure cancer ... and create contagion with every breath. The child is an ooloi, a being beyond gender, born with the alien Oankali power to mix pure DNA within its body. But Jodahs is also the first ooloi born to a human mother, and its destiny is unknown. The futures if both humans and Oankali rest in one young being's successful metamorphosis into adulthood.

Jodahs can become a mad, living plague - or a bridge of peace. Its challenge is to reconcile its galactic heritage of gene trading with the rage of a people facing a terrifying dilemma. For human children will inherit the universe only if they lose all that makes them human.