Clay's Ark
- 213
- Pages
- about 4 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Clay’s Ark” is an eerie, unsettling novel about an alien organism that remakes the people it infects. Written last in the Patternist series, it serves as a prequel, showing how the disease behind the clayarks of “Patternmaster” arrived on Earth. Some readers admire how alien the infection feels and how far Butler draws the reader to its side; others note that the books share a world rather than a continuing plot.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Clay's Ark (1984) is a novel by American science fiction author Octavia E. Butler. The last published of her Patternist series, the novel serves as a prequel that accounts for the arrival of the Clay Ark disease that leads to the evolution of clayarks, the mutants that threaten human survival in the series debut novel, 1976's Patternmaster, and 1978's Survivor, which Butler later disavowed.
Reading order · Patternist series
Full order & progress →- PatternmasterStart here
7.67.6 / 10 - Mind of My Mind
7.97.9 / 10 - Survivor
–Not ranked yet - Wild Seed
8.08.0 / 10 - Clay's ArkThis book
7.67.6 / 10
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.3 across 56 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 28% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 7.6 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 7.3 | 56 | 100% |
Frequently asked
How long is Clay's Ark?
It has 213 pages — shorter than 91% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Science fiction — and a score of 7.6, the closest to this book.
