Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler
There is no authority greater than Doro’s own. He is an old spirit with limitless abilities who inhabits people and jumps from body to body to preserve his own life while killing without remorse. Doro creates empires of supernaturally endowed people that follow his every command since he knows he has a lonely eternity ahead of him. Until he encounters Anyanwu, he has no fear of anyone.
Anyanwu is a being that is similar to Doro but yet unique. She can reverse age and cure wounds with a bite while also transforming her own physique. She surrounds herself with relatives who both fear and revere her and uses her abilities to heal her neighbours and give birth to entire tribes. Until Anyanwu meets Doro, nobody really threatens her.
Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler
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From the first moment, Doro sees Anyanwu, he is enamoured of her. From the Nigerian villages of the 17th century to the cities of the 19th century, their love turns into a struggle for dominance that reverberates across generations, forever altering what it is to be human.
Although she had a remarkable talent, her subjects were never ones for the timid. Because of how fantastic the other novels in this series are and how much I simply must read The Death of Doro, I can’t help but hunt for the remaining volumes in the series.
The protagonist of the tale is an African woman named Anyanwu who, in addition to being eternal in her own body, has the ability to jump between bodies and transfer her consciousness into others, such as a dolphin. But she meets Doro, a person with power comparable to hers but not as kind. Since Doro jumps from body to body, each time he leaves a body, it expires, making Doro immortal.
Additionally, the original consciousness is expelled and dies when he enters a new body. Therefore, he is an immortal serial killer who runs breeding projects to try and better other living things, including other people. Anyanwu is forced to participate against his will.
The reader can be drawn into Butler’s fictional universe, which she constructs by taking a slight detour from reality. In this novel, we experience the era of slave ships, American human enslavement, and the dread of witchcraft without falling victim to the clichés and tropes that are typically associated with those themes. Her characters are strong and complex in every novel I’ve read by her, and they entice me to learn more about their experiences.
