Wildseed (Patternist 1) – Octavia E. Butler Free Audiobook

Written by Octavia E. Butler
Read by Dion Graham
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 48 Kbps
Unabridged

Doro is an entity who changes bodies like clothes, killing his hosts by reflex — or design. He fears no one — until he meets Anyanwu. Anyanwu is a shapeshifter who can absorb bullets and heal with a kiss…and savage anyone who threatens those she loves. She fears no one — until she meets Doro. From African jungles to the colonies of America, Doro and Anyanwu weave together a pattern of destiny that not even immortals can imagine.

In Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed, two immortals discover each other and learn to live together. The older of the immortals, Doro, is an utterly amoral being whose special power is the ability to have his “spirit” invade the body of any other living creature. Unfortunately, the transfer leaves his former body dead and the former inhabitant of his new body destroyed–but Doro could care less. Rather than using his immortality to, say, help people, he has instead started breeding unusual humans, attempting to identify and then develop unusual “talents” that he finds in their embryonic stages among the freaks and misfits of society.

It is on one of his scouting trips to find new sources of talents that Doro discovers the second immortal, Anyanwu. While Doro’s immortality is based on death, Anyanwu’s is based on life: she has an innate understanding of biology and a corresponding power to modify it, with the consequence that she can change her own body in whatever way she wants, and she can create cures for other people based on her inspections. Anyanwau has never aged because she simply prevents her body from aging, but (at the risk of being branded a witch) she has decided to help village after village in an attempt to spread her own good fortune.

It’s clear from the outset that Doro and Anyanwu have drastically different personalities. Doro is a tyrant who sees other beings as tools; Anyanwu wants to see them free and happy, not bred with their siblings and relatives to purify a strain of talent. But it is also clear from the outset that Doro has the upper hand. Not only is he more eager to use violence than Anyanwu–and also more willing to do unmentionable things to force her to his will–but his power is also such that he could always invade her body and destroy her spirit. Only two things prevent him from harming Anyanwu directly: first, his fear that if he takes her over, he will lose all knowledge of her special talent; and second, his fear that if he kills her, he will have lost the only immortal who would ever understand him.