January 31, 2025 ☼ fiction ☼ fantasy ☼ books

The complete Patternist series: Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay’s Ark, Patternmaster

I read the whole series in a month, kind of as one big book. I liked the first two best; Clay’s Ark was my least favorite and Patternmaster dragged at first. But it was satisfying to follow the storyline all the way.

The Indians were rich in untrapped wild seed that they tended to tolerate or even revere rather than destroy. Eventually, they would learn to be civilized and to understand as the whites understood that the hearing of voices, the seeing of visions, the moving of inanimate objects when no hand touched them, all the strange feelings, sensitivities, and abilities were evil or dangerous, or at the very least, imaginary. Then they too would weed out or grind down their different ones, thus freezing themselves in time, depriving their kind of any senses but those already familiar, depriving their children and their children’s children of any weapons with which to confront Doro’s people.
“White women must be protected,” Doro said, “whether they want to be or not.” “As property is protected.” Anyanwu shook her head. “Preserved for the use of owners alone.”