Narrated by: Dion Graham
Series: Patternist, Book 1
Length: 11 hrs and 16 min
Release date: 07-16-09

This book was a surprise for me.

I actually really like books or movies that deal with the concept of immortality, that’s why I tend to like things involving vampires, especially when they’re as funny as the last series I listen to.  Bill the Vampire series.

I literally found this by typing in ‘stories about immortality’ into google, and I’m happily surprised.

Story

Wild Seed follows a historical kind of immortality series, 2 people with different immortal abilities.  1 Doro a spiritual being that has lived for around 3,700 years who is able to transfer his essence to another body thus taking over that body and killing the one he originally inhabited.  And Anyanwu, a lady around 300 years old who has perfect control of her body and can control & change even the minutest aspects in her body allow her to heal herself and others as well as shape shift into whatever animal that pleases her.  Because of this healing, she is effectively immortal.

Anyanwu and Doro both originate from Africa and where the story starts Doro asks Anyanwu to start a different life with him.  As it turns out Doro has been acquiring and bringing together people that are outcast by many societies, people that have rare powers, a bit like Anyanwu & himself and for some time has been participating in eugenics to breed a superior race, where they have strong mental and physical powers, whilst they come to worship him as a god.

Anyanwu is what he calls ‘Wild Seed’ – a person that has developed with incredible abilities, one that has come about not because of his eugenics program.  Anyanwu however, is the only person that is immortal like Doro, yet her abilities are more peaceful.
Doro has a thirst to constantly move from 1 body to another, and has to abstain from taking Anyanwu’s body just because she will not allow herself to be controlled by him.

Listenability

This is a story of a strong African female as the protagonist, and a strong African male as the antagonist.

The story moves in chunks from 1st meeting in Africa, to a ship journey to New York, the nearby city of Doro’s eugenics colony of Wheatfield, through generations and marriages back to Africa.  It deals with conflict and control over the course of many time periods and its incredibly interesting.

It’s slower than most sci-fi books I’ve listened to, but this is also a welcome change.  The time period stage in which this book is set is far longer than any other sci-fi book, thus it makes sense.  The old world progression starting from Africa leading to ‘the new world’ of New York settlements, and the jumping forward in time and getting to know different characters through many generations is a novel concept, and in fact I like this a lot.

Narration/ performance

I found the narrator great, the different African voices + the time period voices for America were really very well done.

Recommendation
I would thoroughly recommend this book.  This is a book that I would recommend to my mum actually. This is not traditional science fiction as most people are used to, fast paced, with a focus on technology and some sort of epic battle, rather it deals with some very interesting and more historical concepts despite characters having surreal abilities in a relatively slow and drawn out way, yet still in a way that is a very enjoyable listen.

It turns out this book is part of a series by Octavia E. Butler called Patternist. In fact, I’m looking forward to listening to the next parts in the series because it’s really a different but welcome pace, coupled with a really interesting concept and I can only imagine it’s going to continue getting better, with the foundations laid out here in this book.

I am happy that I bought and have listened to this book.

Listen to a sample of the book here https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Wild-Seed-Audiobook/B002V1LP0K

And get a free trial of audible with 2 free books, listen to books like this for free, & then if you want….just quit before 30 days & you get to keep everything… sounds like a pretty good deal to me.