Reviews

Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler

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ohwriting's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

sushibear2002's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

An intriguing story, with characters who are striking and memorable, but not for their likability.
Also worth reading for how it ... does't argue with your assumptions about race and gender, per se, but makes you look closely where they came from, and what circumstances would have caused you to have different ones.

jcaulder73's review

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adventurous mysterious reflective medium-paced

3.5

ilifzl's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.0

ortinggirl's review

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dark reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

ketutar's review against another edition

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4.0

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