Dawn

Lilith awakens to find that she has 'slept' for 250 years following the destruction of civilisation on Earth by nuclear war. Lilith and a few other humans have been rescued by an alien species, the Oankali and kept alive aboard their giant world-like spaceship orbiting Earth. The Oankali are a strange species, initially hideous for Lilith to look at, with male and female sexes but also a third type of sexless individual that are able to hook up with mating couples and regulate the mixing of genes to derive the required genetic features. Chillingly, the Oankali travel the Universe looking for other species so that they can exchange and engineer their genes to generate new improved beings. Lilith discovers that she has been selected as a leader of a group of humans and Oankali being sent back to a recovered Earth to repopulate it.

The author does a great job of describing an alien race that is quite different to us and in describing Lilith's reaction and finally her acceptance of them. Lilith often feels like an experimental animal undergoing genetic engineering, but it is clear that the Oankali feel they are doing what is also in her best interests as well as theirs. It will be interesting to see where the next two books of the trilogy take the story once the humans are returned to Earth and the genetic engineering gets underway.