amh007 's review for:

Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler

3.5

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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I appreciate this book for the new ideas it was exploring when it came out in 1980.  (The afterward in the edition I read helped me to understand this).  As a reader today, however, I felt Butler was just glossing over lots of big ideas (the limits of immortality, mutant species, the ethics of eugenics, what does it mean to be a slave, etc).  Also, the ending seemed rather abrupt—and the transformation of the villain seemed odd to me.  I also found it personally difficult reading a novel about people constantly capitulating to a narcissistic sociopath with unlimited power, even to the point of loving him.  The novel compares this to Job’s relationship with God, which I found thought-provoking.