Wild Seed

OCTAVIAAAAA BUTLEEEEEERRRRRRRRR!!!!!

This book was WILD. I saw a couple Goodreads' friend reviews that said as much, and I didn't really understand why. But this book's plot was like a runaway freight train - and, man, you are climbing aboard from page 1. What's funny is that the description of the plot really doesn't capture the urgency of it? But I read this voraciously and spent a lot of time wanting to put it down and just SCREAM. I mean, there is sex and violence and craziness - abounding! - on page after page. But it's also - smart???

OK, briefly, the plot: Doro is a guy, well, more like a spirit. He can't die. Instead, he can jump into other people's bodies and, ahem, WEAR THEM. He is very old (like, thousands of years) and has 1 hobby: breeding more people with supernatural abilities. We start the book in west Africa - sounds like Nigeria? - where he is annoyed that one of “his” villages (of descendants/”breeding stock”) has been pillaged.

While wandering in search of his villagers, he feels something - think Yoda and the Force. He follows the feeling and lands on Anyanwu. Immediately, he understands that she too is special and has supernatural abilities. She's 300+ years old and can mold and shape her body. He's like, dude, great, WILD SEED (TITLE OF THIS BOOK), awesome, you'll make a great addition to my breeding experiment. Anyanwu is like, wow, another super special guy, yes, let's hang. She has a few compunctions, as she realizes how powerful he is... and what a dick he is! And this obsession with BREEDING, mamma mia!

Anyway. They hike back to the coast (Ghana?), where the slave trade is in full force. And - you can just read on. BUT IT'S ALL NUTS, OKAY.

This felt very similar - and similarly delightful - to Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Both are historical fiction + fantasies that are VERY rich and tactile, that are as invested in the fantasy elements as the historical context, and that illuminate the historical context THROUGH the fantasy elements. Both are also SO compelling, and had me reading voraciously/hungrily/crazily. Can't recommend this enough!!

💬: "“I am old,” she said, masking her fear with anger. “I could be your mother’s mother!” She could have been an ancestor of his mother’s mother. But she kept that to herself. “Who are you?” she demanded. “I could be your mother’s father,” he said. She took another step backward, somehow controlling her growing fear.

Butler, Octavia E.. Wild Seed (The Patternist Series Book 1) (p. 11). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.

📖Genres: adult, science fiction, historical fiction, speculative fiction

📚Page Count: 404

🎧Audiobook Length: 11h 09min

👩🏾‍🏫My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5

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TW - <spoiler>Animal death, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Murder, Domestic abuse, Pedophilia, Emotional abuse, Sexual assault, Colonisation, and Death</spoiler>

One of my favorite books of all time. Amazing.

5/5 Stars

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I loved Kindred and was looking forward to reading more by the brilliant Octavia E. Butler. However, this story was definitely not for me. I'm way too squeamish about eugenics, toxic (abusive) relationships and incest. And I HATED Doro!

I love Octavia's stories.

The only problem I have - I have now read two books, Wild Seed, and Kindred - is the... expectation of women to submit. That women's job is to pacify, to appease men to get the smallest amount of consideration and respect. :-( This has been very strong in both books, and I hate it.
I mean, both Rufus and Doro are manchildren with too much power and too little compassion, and both Dana and Anyanwu are strong, intelligent, powerful women, who get forced into submission and placating the men with the power. Both need to give up their power to be able to survive. That's so f-d up!

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority” and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won't respect me I won't respect you” and they mean “if you won't treat me like an authority I won't treat you like a person”
- Autistic Abby

I needed (and still need) time to fully process this book. It is a simple tale, yet has so many layers and potential meanings. At its core, the story follows 300-something-year-old Anyanwu (meaning Sun). Anyanwu is everything feminine. Teacher, caretaker, birthing mother, healer. She has the ability to change and control every cell in her body. She is found by Doro, who is thousands of years older than Anyanwu, and cannot die. He is everything masculine. Leader, creator, warrior, killer, controller, dominant.
The story revolves around these two as their endless romance takes them from pre-colonial Africa to the Antebellum south. Doro loves and then drives Anyanwu away. Anyanwu loves Doro then despises him and runs. This endless dance resembles that of Yin and Yang, always separate, but the two need one another.

I can see how one could see how this book is just a tale of a toxic relationship–why, oh why, does Anyanwu continuously fall for Doro with him being so toxic–however, this book highlights so many topics.

Slavery and the slave trade: Highlights a tiny bit of what it would have been like on the slade ships and being taken from your kin. Being shouted at, hit, spit on, raped, tortured, etc. all by people you have never seen and don't understand their language. Your culture and your way of life completed disrespected and thrown away. Your community completely eviscerated in a moment's notice.

Masculinity and Feminity: What does it even mean to be masculine and to be feminine? In that sense, what does it even mean to be a man or to be a woman? Anyanwu and Doro can change their bodies and become men, women, those of different races, etc. Anyanwu can change her form at a moment's notice, even becoming different animals. Does Anyanwu having a male form make her any less of a woman? Is Doro's undeviating masculinity and Anyanwu's unwavering femininity healthy and always the best response?

Love Conquers All: Anyanwu loves deeply. Doro can't allow himself to love, as all will die and as has happened in the past, he may be the direct cause of that death. Anyanwu heals and loves Doro until he, himself, starts to love again. Although this is not a How-To guide to stay with those in our lives that are toxic, it does speak to the power of love and the ability to change the world through love.

Power and Differences of “Abilities”: The book also speaks to that of the differences between humans. Some in this book are strong people, however, they do not have powers like Anyanwu or Doro. Others have abilities, including the power to control wind, hear others' thoughts, and many others. The book focuses on the fact that most of those with power and abilities go bad and use their power incorrectly. Does power corrupt, and if so, does absolute power (like that of Doro) corrupt absolutely? What must one do to be like Isaac, Anyanwu's best husband and Doro's favorite son, who has power, looks, and is kind and incorruptible?

Along with Feminism (Anyanwu being a strong, complete woman who undermines Doro's patriarchal oppression), Racism, limitations of humanity, and ethics, this book is rich.

Honestly, it was hard for me to read at times. The text is filled with detail and is wonderful writing. However, there were many moments were this book forced me to look inward at my own relationships–or more aptly, the lack thereof. I empathized with Doro and Anyanwu, as they both were incredibly lonely. They needed and wanted people around them (and rather, each other), however because they were the only ones that would not die, they couldn't get what they wanted. As someone who has lived life wanting a relationship with a man and not being able to get that, I understood that and at times, this book pulled large, frustrating, painful emotions from me.

It's very difficult to rate this one.
So many times I wanted to just drop it, but somehow kept reading.
So many feeling were steered, few of them pleasant...

2.5

Phenomenal.

This book could almost be called a classic, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I had expected. Not really sure why. The writing is excellent, but I couldn't seem to connect with the characters. YMMV.
3+ stars.

So vivid and captivating

This book kept my attention from start to finish. Butler did an excellent job, as usual, making us care about the protagonist and submerging us in the story.

This is definitely a good book with an interesting conceit, just not quite my wheelhouse. I'll probably pick up the next one eventually.

It's like if X-Men was good

Octavia Butler was a master of her craft, and Wild Seed is no exception to her work. It is wonderfully complex, ambivalent, and questioning, delving into issues such as gender, slavery, race, and divinity. In this, it is very like Xenogenesis, with characters making choice and getting involved in situations that, while obviously unhealthy, still might be their best option. The idea of two immortals locked in a world of impermanence but with wildly divergent philosophies about how to spend their time is intriguing, one valuing and creating life at every chance she gets and the other destroying and refining life in the hopes of creating something better. This latter is a problematic character, but one who nevertheless earns the sympathies of the reader and his protagonist counterpart. I don't really feel like a skilled enough writer to review Butler's works, but I will recommend this to all fans of science fiction with a dose of social philosophy.

Well, that was somber
breeding your kids like livestock
just faithful meat sacks.

Short Review: Continue to be impressed with Butler's writing and so far, very different settings for her books. This is a story of two immortals (reason for their immortality is never given) that meet in 17th century Africa. One has been alive for nearly 4000 years, the other only a few hundred years. The story is set over about 200 years as they come together as lovers, friends, and enemies.

Butler just doesn't have light themes. This book is about eugenics, racism, sexism, violence, slavery and more. It is rough and took me a while to get through just because it was so draining to read. But at the same time it is very good writing and a compelling story.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/wild-seed-octavia-butler/

reviews.metaphorosis.com

3.5 stars

Doro, who has the power to take the bodies of others, meets Anyanwu as he wanders the world gathering stock for his efforts to breed humans with special powers. Both immortal, they each suffer setbacks and disagreements as they forge an uneasy and uneven alliance.

I first ran across Octavia Butler's books in the stacks at Powell's, a couple of decades ago. I didn't buy any. I'd heard her name, and the feeling I got from that and from the books themselves was of serious, dry fiction, ponderous and message-laden - Ursula Le Guin without the sense of humor. I passed, and never felt the need to change my mind.
Then, a few months ago, I ran across her books on sale. They were pretty cheap, and given her reputation, I thought it was about time I gave her a try despite the dull and dusty image. I picked an omnibus edition, and put it on my list.
I'm finally getting down to it, and I have to admit that I was wrong. This book is serious, it's true, and nowhere near the light-hearted vein. But it's also not the self-important ‘These Are Big Ideas' tome I expected. In fact, it's a perfectly readable and interesting story about an interesting concept. It's not the dazzlingly insightful social science fiction I had hoped for, but it's certainly not the pretentious manifesto I had feared. It's just a good science fiction book.
Butler does a good job of exploring the practicalities of the powers the chief protagonists have, and manages to imbue secondary characters with a fair amount of depth. While it's always clear who the villain and the hero of the piece are, both Doro and Anyanwu are treated relatively fairly.
I have mixed feelings about Butler's success in bringing the Doro-Anyanwu relationship to life. On one hand, what's described is probably optimistic under the circumstances - the time, their relative levels of experience, etc. Anyanwu, for example, travels from her only home in Africa to North America with remarkable aplomb. On the other hand, I found it disappointing that she so consistently failed to stand up for herself with Doro; that weakness didn't seem to suit her character. Butler may have aimed for a compromise between modern palatability and realism, but I felt she missed the mark.
The book, broken into three time periods, moves along smoothly and fairly rapidly. Not too surprising, but enjoyable. Then, suddenly, it stops. There's a two page epilogue, and that's it. Perhaps Butler originally intended a longer volume, or a trilogy instead of a quartet. In any case, the break is surprising, and a bit awkward.
All in all, a pleasant surprise. Not magical, but certainly well written, intelligent social science fiction worth checking out. I look forward to the rest of the series.

Reviewed here.

This fantasy novel is a well-written and unusual treatment of two different forms of personal immortality. It also tackles ethics and the problems of living with special powers of the mind.

Doro is thousands of years old. He has the power to transfer his mind, instantly and effortlessly, from one body to another. When he does this, body A dies, and the original mind of body B is permanently erased. All of his bodies are mortal, but his mind lives on, leaving a trail of dead bodies behind him. He's become ruthless with age, and indifferent to death: if he wants to cross a river, he transfers to a body on the other side. He's obsessed with breeding humans to obtain other powers of the mind. He has only one power, but he uses it to intimidate and control people, killing any who resist.

Anyanwu is hundreds of years old. She knows the workings of her body intimately and can reshape it at will. She doesn't age, and she can heal herself rapidly from disease or damage. She can reshape herself into an animal, or a man. She's a compassionate healer. She can't reshape others as she does with herself, but she can help them considerably.

This book is their story. It's an unrelentingly serious and rather painful story, and not one that I want to reread often, but it's a good enough story to be worth rereading occasionally. And it does have a happy enough ending, eventually.

So far, I've read it in full only twice. But there are other times that I've picked it up and read some of it.