First Lines of Octavia E. Butler's "Wild Seed"

 "Doro discovered the woman by accident when he went to see what was left of one of his seed villages. The village was a comfortable mud-walled place surrounded by grasslands and scattered trees. But Doro realized even before he reached it that its people were gone."

- Octavia E. Butler, Wild Seed

I'm about half-way through this unique book with mixed emotions. On one hand, it's a killer pitch: a struggle between two frenemy immortal shape changers, one of whom is obsessed with breeding ever more powerful and unique abilities and the other who can provide them but doesn't agree with the project. On the other hand, much of the book takes place in long, intense conversations that, while skillfully rendered, take a long time to unfold without much actually occurring. It's essentially philosophical dialogue, but about the esoteric situations of these two supernatural beings that don't directly connect to the moral dilemmas that I personally find relevant. I've debated stopping the book but find myself compelled to return to it - there's a understated, moving power in Butler's prose. Curious to see how this ends; i'm hoping it's a clean ending and not merely a bridge to the next Patternist book.