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Summary: The Best of all her books!!!!
Review: I first fell in love with Kindred over 10 years ago, when it was first printed in hardback. After that I would search the bookstore shelves for any book of her's I could find. After reading over ten of her books, I believe Wildseed is her very best! The one thing I hate; I read Mind of My Mind BEFORE Wildseed. If you haven't read either, read Wildseed THEN Mind of My Mind. The next one in the series is Pattermaster, which I thought was the VERY WORST of all the books of her's I've read.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and Frightening
Review: This book was a powerful portrayal of love and hurt. In a world where people are social beings who need each other, we see two immortals who have to live through the death of many loved ones and finally they find each other. Their love hate relationship is fascinating in the sense that it always brings them back to each other, like they are soul mates destined to be together forever ( literallly). I loved this book. I became engrossed in it and could barely put it down. I wept for the pain of Anyawu and became furious with the actions of Doro. This book is destined to be a classic,
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Summary: A Classic
Review: I am not normally a science fiction fan, but this book gripped me from the start and I couldn't put it down. Butler's lean, spare style of writing helps keep the story tightly under control and moving briskly. In addition, her skill at constructing multi-dimensional characters is at it's best in this novel. It isn't easy to make individuals as powerful as Anyanwu and Doro seem like believable people with genuine human emotions, but Butler pulls it off, showing startingly empathy with her characters, especially Anyanwu. The relationship between Doro and Anyanwu is so skillfully done you can't help but think of them as real people. The book is rich with both historical and sci-fi detail and gives the reader an almost overwhelming sense of epic scope while basing the story around a small, intimate cast. Butler is an excellent writer and this is arguably her finest effort -- a good book to start with if you haven't read her before.
--Teri
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Summary: this book made me want to read more sci-fi!!
Review: never have i encountered such a love hate relationship as in this book. the characters jump out of the book. ms. butler has a fantastic imagination that weaves sci-fi and ancient african culture. it is romantic and dangerous. i loved it. i just put the book down and jumped on the net to find out who else felt the same way!!
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Summary: Octavia Butler your work is far beyond excellent 10++++++++
Review: This book is extrodinary, I enjoyed the African culture in SCI-FI. I have been waiting for this for a long time. You've made a lot of us prouder. Thank you.
Rating: 
Summary: alternately elegant, disturbing, and frustrating
Review: As an African-American who is interested in science fiction, it is refreshing to read such a novel which at is core is based upon African
mythological figures.
Ms. Butler through her depiction of the lives of immortals from pre-colonial Africa through present day America, provides a subtle social commentary upon the constructs of race, domination, incest, and feminism.<pr> Most of the time it works brilliantly; however, her stark depictions sometimes become too disturbing, making it a difficult reading experience.
Its originality alone makes it well worth reading---a welcome departure from the tired storyline of the nineteen year old farmhand from a mythological western european country who saves the world by recovering some sort of magic weapon
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Summary: A phenomenal saga, a clash of "genetic nobility"
Review: Octavia Butler's Wild Seed is the first in what becomes her Patternist series. The story begins in a rare place: Africa. The heroine, Anyanwu, is something rare and fantastic -- she has fine control of her own body to the molecular level. This makes her a fine prize to Doro is the villain of sorts and Anyanwu's lover/adversary, a brilliant malevolant creature whose existence is continued over thousands of years at the expense of others' lives.
Anyanwu is a free woman in mind, heart and spirt -- she is, in her own right, as powerful in her own way as Doro. She provides a humanizing, empathic balance to Doro's clinical machinations of breeding human wild talents to produce more powerful abilities in future generations.
The cast of characters is diverse, but Butler gives enough attention to each that the reader develops a sense of humanity about them: from Isaac the flighted telekinetic, to the insane, incestuous family overheard by the telepathic daughter one house over, to the people unwittingly foolish or arrogant enough to cross Doro. Doro himself even has sympathetic qualities for all that he is relentlessly and amorally committed to his plan to breed a perfect race.
The saga of Doro vs. Anyanwu, Anyanwu subjugated to Doro, Doro's rage, Anyanwu's escape, Doro's realization that Anyanwu is not only too precious to his plans to lose but that he loves her, and Isaac's love for the two of them spans several centuries, moving into, through and beyond the slave years of the burgeoning United States. Through the entire story there is a quirksome, bitter irony--Doro's manipulations regarding the reproduction of the people he calls his give a wry, intelligent twist to the "brotherhood of man" cliche
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Summary: Gasp! ( I think that says it all)
Review: I won't go into a lengthly description of the book since others have done it better than I could. Suffice it to say this is a truly magnificent novel, something which I think my sister Anyanwu would agree with
Rating:
Summary: The Book is FABULOUS
Review: I am a 16 year old student at Banneker High School in Washington D.C. and I must say that I really enjoyed this book. Octavia E. Butler is one of the least known black female writer, because unlike other writers she writes Science Fiction. This books tell the story of Doro and Anyanwu. Doro is a spirit who has the capability of taking the bodies of others. He is like a pest and the body is his host. Anyanwu is a shapeshifter. She become a young woman, a old woman , a man, a leopard, et cetera. The story begins in the African Jungle is about 1620 here Anyanwu first meets Doro and leaves her kinsmen for this strange man. Later her love for Doro turns into hate and he knows this. She knows her life is in danger, but how will she get away from him, before he takes her body like does to so many who anger him as she does so many time. This book is an absolute phenomenon
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Summary: A rich and fascinating view into a world that may exist...
Review: Octavia Butler is a first rate story teller, whose science fiction is so full of life and passion, one cannot be sure that it is really fiction. Reading her prose is akin to living in the hearts and souls of her travelers. It is imaginative, breathtaking and completely realistic and believable. Ms. Butler knows the human soul and much of its essence.
-- Andrea Nichole Ferebee, Yale Universit
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