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gcamelopardalis 's review for:
Wild Seed
by Octavia E. Butler
Wild Seed is a sci-fi novel about people with powers, about slavery, about power dynamics.
It follows two beings, an immortal, yet relatively young, African woman named Anyanwu and a 3 thousand year old man named Doro. Anyanwu is incredibly powerful, she is a shapeshifter and a healer, who has lived with her descendents and done what she needs to do to retain her freedom and her livelihood. Which all changes once she meets Doro, who can kill with a thought and exerts his power whenever it suits him.
Doro is so old and detached he's like a Sims player, making the perfect person and then having them make a 100 babies. He refers to Anyanwu as "wild seed" because she is a strain of powered person that he hasn't seen before. As soon as he meets her, he coerces her into sailing to America with him. He threatens her descendents and says he will take them instead - because they have her bloodline. He is accustomed to taking what he wants, uncompromisingly. The book switches POV between the two of them so it is made very clear that he has every intention of returning to Africa and enslaving her descendents too - more healthy stock.
It's weird, as the reader, you almost find yourself going along with Doro - the logistics of breeding special powered people, the inevitability of people having to submit to him, etc. He reminds me a lot of Kilgrave from Jessica Jones.
I really liked the ending to this. Doro and Anyanwu are linked, they're possibly the only two immortal beings in existence. But throughout the book Doro acts with unchecked power, wielding it over his community and over Anyanwu without a second thought. It's only when Doro realises that they two are connected and that Ayanwu decides to do the one thing he cannot stop her from doing, that an actual balance of power could be struck. And without balance, they cannot live with one another.
I do gotta say though, Doro is crazy amounts of fucked up and does just about the worst stuff to everyone, so when they do end up in balance I'm kinda like yikes. I also thought it was interesting that for most of the book Doro could have just left Anyanwu alone, but his need to exert his power over her drives him to travel the world searching for her.
Reviewed for a prompt in the Book Coven Pirate Challenge.
It follows two beings, an immortal, yet relatively young, African woman named Anyanwu and a 3 thousand year old man named Doro. Anyanwu is incredibly powerful, she is a shapeshifter and a healer, who has lived with her descendents and done what she needs to do to retain her freedom and her livelihood. Which all changes once she meets Doro, who can kill with a thought and exerts his power whenever it suits him.
Doro is so old and detached he's like a Sims player, making the perfect person and then having them make a 100 babies. He refers to Anyanwu as "wild seed" because she is a strain of powered person that he hasn't seen before. As soon as he meets her, he coerces her into sailing to America with him. He threatens her descendents and says he will take them instead - because they have her bloodline. He is accustomed to taking what he wants, uncompromisingly. The book switches POV between the two of them so it is made very clear that he has every intention of returning to Africa and enslaving her descendents too - more healthy stock.
It's weird, as the reader, you almost find yourself going along with Doro - the logistics of breeding special powered people, the inevitability of people having to submit to him, etc. He reminds me a lot of Kilgrave from Jessica Jones.
I really liked the ending to this. Doro and Anyanwu are linked, they're possibly the only two immortal beings in existence. But throughout the book Doro acts with unchecked power, wielding it over his community and over Anyanwu without a second thought. It's only when Doro realises that they two are connected and that Ayanwu decides to do the one thing he cannot stop her from doing, that an actual balance of power could be struck. And without balance, they cannot live with one another.
I do gotta say though, Doro is crazy amounts of fucked up and does just about the worst stuff to everyone, so when they do end up in balance I'm kinda like yikes. I also thought it was interesting that for most of the book Doro could have just left Anyanwu alone, but his need to exert his power over her drives him to travel the world searching for her.
Reviewed for a prompt in the Book Coven Pirate Challenge.