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4.18 AVERAGE
4.18 AVERAGE
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I've been reading too many Butler books in a row, so I was tired of the recurrent theme of all-powerful beings controlling but also loving their subjects. Maybe I'd feel different if I reread this, but it wasn't my favorite of her books. I had to skim and the historical context felt more lacking, whereas some other books felt very clearly in context of their setting.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Incest, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts
Moderate: Rape, Sexual assault, Suicide
While an interesting concept....it was one of the slowest reads I have ever struggled through. I will not be continuing the series.
Published in 1980 as the fourth book of the Patternist series, Wild Seed is chronologically the earliest book in the Patternistr world. Butler wrote it as a prequel. As far as I know, there are two ways to read the series: in order of publication order or in chronological order. I opted for the latter.
Wild Seed is about two immortals: Doro (a body snatcher) and Anyanwu (shapeshifter with healing powers). Doro recognizes Anyanwu as Wild Seed and wants to use her in his breeding program. He’s a possessive and dangerous bastard with destructive powers. His goal? To create immortal superhumans.
Doro persuades Anyanwu to travel with him to America. He plans to impregnate her (you can’t call his intentions more elegantly), but he also wants his favorite son, Isaac, to have children with her. Yup, love and empathy aren’t Doro’s strengths. He has a clear vision of what he wants to achieve, and no one will stand in his way.
I loved Butler’s unique take on racial and gender issues. Wild Seed works as an exciting thriller about people with super abilities (telekinesis, shapeshifting, healing), but it also tackles serious themes like eugenics, colonialism, slavery, power struggles, racism, patriarchy, and feminism. Butler explores them with sensitivity, but some readers may feel uncomfortable reading Wild Seed, anyway.
The characters are great and nicely fleshed out. As a shapeshifter, Anyanwu isn’t particularly bound by gender or age. Nor is she tied to a race or species. The descriptions of her gifts impressed me with their imagery and the idea behind them. Anyanwu can alter her body in extreme ways, but also learn to heal diseases by experiencing and understanding them on an almost molecular level. She’s driven by love (for her children and life) and concern for others. To protect her offspring and give birth to immortals like her or Doro (so she doesn’t have to witness the death of her children), she agrees to be treated like a breeding animal. Again, some readers may find it uncomfortable, but I bought her narrative and justification for everything that happened.
And Doro... Doro is despicable; he creates reproductive colonies (“seed villages”) to further his project of creating superhumans. He approaches humans as subjects with more or less interesting traits or powers, which he seeks to strengthen through reproductive control (including inbreeding). Those who resist him or run away end up dead. Killing someone who’s no longer useful is Doro’s second nature. His relationship with Anyanwu and his favorite son Isaac is painful but fascinating - both are among the few people who can awaken traces of humanity in Doro (though that doesn’t mean he treats them well). Many readers will loathe Doro, but I think some of them accept that humans inbreed animals to create “sweeter” pets or better food sources. A thing to consider.
Butler's writing is great. I love her clear and direct style that makes reading the story effortless and addictive. The tense and compelling plot makes Wild Seed a compulsive read. Ultimately, you can read it simply as an exciting story (in which everyone nice suffers) or as a treaty on racial and sexual power dynamics, as well as, the ethics of genetic tinkering.
Wild Seed is my first Butler’s book, and I’m hooked. It proves speculative fiction knows no boundaries and can tackle serious themes in an exciting (and often disturbing) way.
Wild Seed is about two immortals: Doro (a body snatcher) and Anyanwu (shapeshifter with healing powers). Doro recognizes Anyanwu as Wild Seed and wants to use her in his breeding program. He’s a possessive and dangerous bastard with destructive powers. His goal? To create immortal superhumans.
Doro persuades Anyanwu to travel with him to America. He plans to impregnate her (you can’t call his intentions more elegantly), but he also wants his favorite son, Isaac, to have children with her. Yup, love and empathy aren’t Doro’s strengths. He has a clear vision of what he wants to achieve, and no one will stand in his way.
I loved Butler’s unique take on racial and gender issues. Wild Seed works as an exciting thriller about people with super abilities (telekinesis, shapeshifting, healing), but it also tackles serious themes like eugenics, colonialism, slavery, power struggles, racism, patriarchy, and feminism. Butler explores them with sensitivity, but some readers may feel uncomfortable reading Wild Seed, anyway.
The characters are great and nicely fleshed out. As a shapeshifter, Anyanwu isn’t particularly bound by gender or age. Nor is she tied to a race or species. The descriptions of her gifts impressed me with their imagery and the idea behind them. Anyanwu can alter her body in extreme ways, but also learn to heal diseases by experiencing and understanding them on an almost molecular level. She’s driven by love (for her children and life) and concern for others. To protect her offspring and give birth to immortals like her or Doro (so she doesn’t have to witness the death of her children), she agrees to be treated like a breeding animal. Again, some readers may find it uncomfortable, but I bought her narrative and justification for everything that happened.
And Doro... Doro is despicable; he creates reproductive colonies (“seed villages”) to further his project of creating superhumans. He approaches humans as subjects with more or less interesting traits or powers, which he seeks to strengthen through reproductive control (including inbreeding). Those who resist him or run away end up dead. Killing someone who’s no longer useful is Doro’s second nature. His relationship with Anyanwu and his favorite son Isaac is painful but fascinating - both are among the few people who can awaken traces of humanity in Doro (though that doesn’t mean he treats them well). Many readers will loathe Doro, but I think some of them accept that humans inbreed animals to create “sweeter” pets or better food sources. A thing to consider.
Butler's writing is great. I love her clear and direct style that makes reading the story effortless and addictive. The tense and compelling plot makes Wild Seed a compulsive read. Ultimately, you can read it simply as an exciting story (in which everyone nice suffers) or as a treaty on racial and sexual power dynamics, as well as, the ethics of genetic tinkering.
Wild Seed is my first Butler’s book, and I’m hooked. It proves speculative fiction knows no boundaries and can tackle serious themes in an exciting (and often disturbing) way.
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
4.5/5
As Woolf once said [b:Middlemarch|19089|Middlemarch|George Eliot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1568307771l/19089._SY75_.jpg|1461747] is one of the few English books written for grown-ups, so too is this one of the few pieces of science fiction written for the real world, not marketing and academia. Of course, so chock full is this work with critical engagement and unflinching history that the cries of 'polemic' and 'bias' would not be an unlikely reaction. If that doesn't work, 'prosaic' could always be used as a strong condemnation via completely arbitrary standards of institutionalized repute. The work has too high of a rating for those sorts of epithets to have much of an effect, but not all creations inherently concerned with the same material in many of the same ways prove as undeniably excellent in their respective domains.
Black History Month as defined by the US Government has its last day tomorrow, and I wonder how much immortality would be required to value the conversation of the survival over the death of 'it's over, it's done, have a cookie to stave off the resolution cause it's never going to come.' The last of this is all white people creation, for after centuries of winning in the absolute worst ways known to humanity and then some, we can't imagine going out in any way other than that which we put upon others. A simpler explanation is that we love our money too much and would rather be run out on a rail than give it to those as reparation for a country's history of eugenicist leeching, but hey. Life's a mess and the reasons for a collective people's amnesia and hoarding of personal trauma at the expense of anyone who doesn't correctly foot the physiognomic bill must involve more than fear of violence and indoctrination via capitalism.
In this particular world of Butler's, the name of the game is power and its more subtle kin empathy. Along with the much increased measure of supernatural inclusion that I am suspect to gorging on, I liked this better than [b:Kindred|60931|Kindred|Octavia E. Butler|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1339423248l/60931._SY75_.jpg|1049657] because of the vaster space Butler worked on for her creations. If there's one plus to my current philosophy class beyond my getting a measure of many an auspicious overheard name and finding the majority of them lacking, it's seeing where the body hatred came in, the disregard for existence other than the self, the splintering of mind and soul and truth that results in a class named 'Philosophy' and should really be 'Greek and English and Scottish and German Philosophy of Various Hopscotch Periods in Somewhat that Particular Order'. This is an ideological movement of centuries whose myriad challengers are still fringed around the main, so if you want to write a work that destabilizes a thought process that so smugly thinks of itself as the 'center', you need eons of time and continents of space.
Butler is not Anyanwu, but when it comes to the evil wrought by white supremacy in its breeding lines and uselessness makes waste, it's not hard to see that the main factor missing is humanity. Butler is also not Doro, but the prototype of the white serial killer bred on a millenia of alienation and instinctive thrill kill is not hard to construct with the aid of the canon of literature and film and creed. Anyone accusing this work of misandry, please. Accuse each and every vaulted work of misogyny, white supremacism, classism, heteronormativity, etc, etc, ad nauseam when appropriate, and you will actually work towards saving lives and spirits. Misandry? Try reverse racism while you're at it. If someone goes on a genocidal rampage against white men on a hegemonic scale and inculcates long lasting civilizations with the trend, I may start to take you seriously.
Will I scare away readers by saying that this work is ultimately a romance? If I do, they were not the right audience for this work anyway.
As Woolf once said [b:Middlemarch|19089|Middlemarch|George Eliot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1568307771l/19089._SY75_.jpg|1461747] is one of the few English books written for grown-ups, so too is this one of the few pieces of science fiction written for the real world, not marketing and academia. Of course, so chock full is this work with critical engagement and unflinching history that the cries of 'polemic' and 'bias' would not be an unlikely reaction. If that doesn't work, 'prosaic' could always be used as a strong condemnation via completely arbitrary standards of institutionalized repute. The work has too high of a rating for those sorts of epithets to have much of an effect, but not all creations inherently concerned with the same material in many of the same ways prove as undeniably excellent in their respective domains.
Black History Month as defined by the US Government has its last day tomorrow, and I wonder how much immortality would be required to value the conversation of the survival over the death of 'it's over, it's done, have a cookie to stave off the resolution cause it's never going to come.' The last of this is all white people creation, for after centuries of winning in the absolute worst ways known to humanity and then some, we can't imagine going out in any way other than that which we put upon others. A simpler explanation is that we love our money too much and would rather be run out on a rail than give it to those as reparation for a country's history of eugenicist leeching, but hey. Life's a mess and the reasons for a collective people's amnesia and hoarding of personal trauma at the expense of anyone who doesn't correctly foot the physiognomic bill must involve more than fear of violence and indoctrination via capitalism.
In this particular world of Butler's, the name of the game is power and its more subtle kin empathy. Along with the much increased measure of supernatural inclusion that I am suspect to gorging on, I liked this better than [b:Kindred|60931|Kindred|Octavia E. Butler|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1339423248l/60931._SY75_.jpg|1049657] because of the vaster space Butler worked on for her creations. If there's one plus to my current philosophy class beyond my getting a measure of many an auspicious overheard name and finding the majority of them lacking, it's seeing where the body hatred came in, the disregard for existence other than the self, the splintering of mind and soul and truth that results in a class named 'Philosophy' and should really be 'Greek and English and Scottish and German Philosophy of Various Hopscotch Periods in Somewhat that Particular Order'. This is an ideological movement of centuries whose myriad challengers are still fringed around the main, so if you want to write a work that destabilizes a thought process that so smugly thinks of itself as the 'center', you need eons of time and continents of space.
Butler is not Anyanwu, but when it comes to the evil wrought by white supremacy in its breeding lines and uselessness makes waste, it's not hard to see that the main factor missing is humanity. Butler is also not Doro, but the prototype of the white serial killer bred on a millenia of alienation and instinctive thrill kill is not hard to construct with the aid of the canon of literature and film and creed. Anyone accusing this work of misandry, please. Accuse each and every vaulted work of misogyny, white supremacism, classism, heteronormativity, etc, etc, ad nauseam when appropriate, and you will actually work towards saving lives and spirits. Misandry? Try reverse racism while you're at it. If someone goes on a genocidal rampage against white men on a hegemonic scale and inculcates long lasting civilizations with the trend, I may start to take you seriously.
Will I scare away readers by saying that this work is ultimately a romance? If I do, they were not the right audience for this work anyway.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I reserve one star reviews for books I can’t finish. And I did finish this one. But only out of a sense of obligation given Butler’s reputation.
I hated this book. I have seen other reviews that seem to mirror how I felt. Whatever it was Butler wanted me to get from this book, I did not get.
All I got was revulsion.
I hated this book. I have seen other reviews that seem to mirror how I felt. Whatever it was Butler wanted me to get from this book, I did not get.
All I got was revulsion.
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
My recollection is that I accidentally read this series out of order, but it doesn't matter that much. All of Butler's books are above average and most are excellent, this one included.