Book Review: Wild Seed
A Patternist Novel by Ocatvia E. Butler
Although I had hoped to read “Kindred” by Octavia E. Butler, after seeing previews for the series online, there was a sizeable waiting list at my library. So I selected another of her books entitled “Wild Seed,” part of her Patternist series.
Wow. (pausing to release a deep breath) Wow, what an intense, emotional book. I kept telling myself that I was going to put it down and read something else lighter as a break because it was creating a heaviness on my heart. Despite that, the desire to find out what what was happening next with the characters kept me going back to the book instead.
“Wild Seed” is the story of two immortals born in Africa far from each other — not just geographically either. Doro, born genetically male, is already several millennia old when he is drawn to Anyanwu, who is NOT. Anyanwu, born genetically female, appears to be an old women when Doro finds her on the outskirts of her village — readers soon learn that she is more than three centuries old at the time (quite old by human standards but far younger than him still).
Doro comes upon her while searching for “his people,” individuals who were taken from one of his villages to be sold as slaves in the New World. As they talk, she learns of his great age, and he learns of hers. We learn that Doro continues to live on (and on) by taking the bodies from others, killing them. Conversely, Anyanwu endures in her own body that she has learned to change and adapt as she needs it to to not only conquer age but illness and injury. She can appear as other people or as herself at varying ages, including at the age she was when she first “transitioned.” To avoid too much attention, she ages herself at the same pace as others others in her life to avoid being ostracized…or worse.
We also learn that Doro has been creating camps or villages of “his people” in the land of his birth as well as in the New World, which of course becomes North America and the United States. He finds individuals with specialness, such as telekinesis and telepathy, and “breeds” them for his own use. That use includes but is not limited to becoming new bodies for him when the one he is inhabiting wears out. He feels a great fondness for this new woman and immediately says that he wants to marry her as well as adding her uniqueness to his collection of specially bred individuals.
The book covers a period of time from the early-to-mid 1700s through the start of U.S. Civil War. After Doro, Anyanwu, Doro’s sons, and individuals Doro has purchased from slave-traders travel from African to America (shortly after Doro meets Anyanwu), the rest of the novel takes place in rural New York and later New Orleans. While introducing the reader to other characters, such as Doro’s son Isaac, it primarily follows Doro and Anyanwu’s story of love, hate, fear, anger, and subsequent offspring.
As I said, it is a heavy book exploring ideas of forced and coerced enslavement, incest, mutations, societal mores, personal and religious beliefs as well as instilled morality, and the meaning of family and kinship, the impact of ancestry, isolation, “othering,” nature, nurture, humanity, healing, and happiness. If and when you decide to undertake this novel, be prepared to find yourself musing over these weighty subjects…I certainly did.
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