Adulthood Rites Octavia Butler, 1988

This is a sequel to Dawn, a middling novel from Butler, and is the second in the Xenogenesis trilogy.

It's kinda gross because it's essentially a story about aliens, Oankali, who have these crazy tentacles all over their bodies-- but as we learn in this novel (and I am not giving anything important away)-- they have actually modified themselves from their preferred giant armored caterpillar form in order to be more acceptable to humans. So they picked a human shape with tentacles coming out from/instead of sensory organs, body hair, and excretory organs. OK!

The Human/Oankali colonies established on Earth at the end of Dawn are revisited in 60 years. There's not much alien sex in this book which is a relief and a change from Dawn. There's conflict between the humans who are not sympathizing/interbreeding with the Oankali and those who are, and Akin, a human/Oankali leads the real humans to terraform Mars. The story will be continued in the next novel but I likely won't stick around for it.

It was vaguely interesting in that it continued the lives of Lilith and Nikanji (stars of Dawn, respectively mother and Oankali ungendered parent to Akin) who I had liked in the prior book, although Butler continues to kill off or maim characters willy-nilly.