Mind of my Mind Review – Octavia E. Butler’s Seed to Harvest

Yesterday I presented to you the first novel published in the Patternmaster series by acclaimed science fiction author Octavia E. Butler (you might want to check that one out first), today I will continue with the fairly different Mind of my Mind.

Exploring the origin of the pattern, this book takes us back to modern times where Doro, a immortal man obsessed with creating his own people of humans with special abilities, uses and manipulates others to achieve this goal.
The focus is on one of his numerous children, Mary, who is close to achieving her full potential. Guided and controlled by Doro, she is supposed to be a huge success for him, not knowing that she could also be a threat.

If you start to read this book without knowing it to be a prequel to Patternmaster, you wouldn’t guess at first. Not only are the setting and characters completely different, the whole style has changed as well. Changing perspectives between Mary (in first-person narration) and other important characters (in third-person) provides the reader with a broader view of what’s going on. However, the prose stays just as nice and easy to follow as in its predecessor.

While Patternmaster handled difficult topics like slavery, misuse of the law or even murder in a pretty light tone, this one presents even more realistic suffering in a way that really makes to feel these things. The story already starts out with a mother unable to protect her neglected child from her violent lovers, and continues after just one more chapter with attempted rape on this child in the future. This should tell you what you’re in for with this one.
It still has very sweet moments, but they feel so much more deserved and needed due to the various ways characters are experiencing pain. The beginning is pretty dark, but it gets more positive over time.

The theme of slavery continues to play a large part, but in a different way. There is no human trade, it is the power Doro has over his children and others that enslaves them, as well as the pattern that connects them. So we finally find out what the pattern really is, yeah.

The feelings and motivations are expressed well, I could always understand the actions of characters, even if I disliked them. While I did feel that the characters in Patternmaster didn’t have much to them, the ones in Mind of my Mind were so much stronger.
Especially Doro was fascinating, but basically everyone was of interest to me. I never was unhappy when the point of view changed, which normally often disrupts me. I can imagine people disliking Mary, since she is hostile to almost everyone in the beginning and shows few redeeming qualities, but considering her situation and upbringing I can pretty much excuse that.

The novel never feels to short even though it has not that many pages. Still it manages to tell an intense and wholesome story. I also think it really pays to read Patternmaster before this because it will lead to a lot of revelations, moments where you just think “OMG, now I understand”, and these moments were just wonderful to me.

I can’t recommend this great and exciting mix of drama and contemporary science fiction enough. It’s not as difficult to endure as I made it sound, I promise, it’s actually almost a light read.

Read Part 3 here