Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
This is book #2 of the series.
Spoilers incoming, esp for the first book.
In the first book, Lauren Oya Olamina is living in Robledo - a walled community in a hellscape version of America, where law and order has broken down, and people have to fend for themselves against violent individuals and gangs.
Her community is destroyed in book one and she travels north. She meets Bankole, they get married, and he has some land up north they settle on. She has also collected several other survivors along her way and they live on Bankoles land as well.
Lauren begins her religion, called Earthseed, which is her life's purpose. The end of Book 1 is the start of Earthseed.
Parable of the Talents continues this story, in a narrative style that I did not like for the first half of the book.
The first book is told from Lauren's perspective. The second book is narrated by her daughter, who is writing about her mother, and it is as if we are reading the daughter's book. But the book is primarily Lauren's journal entries. So the main perspective we get still is Lauren's, interspersed with her daughter's commentary and life story in parts, as well as a few journal entries from other characters in the story.
I was not interested in the daughter's commentary and perspective, and in the early chapters, her daughter seemingly spoiled things about Lauren's story. I found it not-immersive. I didn't think it was bad, but it wasn't really my taste.
But Lauren's story is incredibly interesting. She has developed her Earthseed community to, iirc, 60 or so people. They have a formal sort-of sunday-service called the gathering. They continue to bring in new people.
Simultaneously is a looming conflict - Presidential candidate Jarrett. He is an evil mother fucker who founded a religion called "Christian America". He's a fascist, a white supremacist. This book was written almost 30 years ago, but Jarrett reminded me of Trump in SO MANY WAYS. It was both neat and unsettling. Jarrett was arguably worse, but not by a huge margin.
So, this book follows the story of Lauren's community and Earthseed religion. It follows the conflict between Christian American crusaders and "heathens" who don't live the way CA folks think everybody should live. It follows Lauren's quest to find her daughter who she'd been separated from (her daughter spoils that the separation had happened early in the book iirc).
It is an excellent book, and by the end I really loved it. In the second half, the daughter's narrative was playing a more meaningful role in and intertwining with Lauren's story. That's where I started liking the narrative style.
The first book didn't make my favorites list. It was narrow. The book was excellent. I was extremely interested in it. I really liked it. But it just made me sad when I read it. Idk. There's a particular feeling that puts books in my favorites. The first book narrowly didn't make it because that feeling was not present, or was not strong enough. This book narrowly does make it because that feeling is just strong enough.
And by association, I suppose the series (including the first book) is a favorite of mine. But it's narrow.
They're definitely great books, regardless of my taste, and I highly recommend them.