Lisa Eckstein’s Reviews > Doll Seed: Stories > Status Update

"And They Will Rise From the Oceans" is another story about demonic possession that escalates tensely.

Such an interesting range of stories. Overall they all lean toward horror, but while in many stories the horror is supernatural, sometimes it's just the horror of how people treat each other, as in "Miss Black Little Hill of 1965" and "The Invisible Son".

Not all the parts of "The Wishing Well Off Fordham Road" worked for me, but I found the ending really satisfying.

"The Curl of Emma Jean" is an intense scene between two sisters who are trying to come to an agreement while focused on very different concerns.

The title story, "Doll Seed", is from the point of view of a Black doll who just wants a child to love her but instead is pulled into the 1950s doll tests (designed to show internalized racism among children) and the general racism of the era.

Cool seeing the range of stories, though there are of course some interests the author returns to. "Etta, Zora, and the First Serpent" is surprisingly about Zora Neale Hurston summoning a spirit. Another spirit is invoked in "Family Line", which packs some emotional power into a few pages.

A lot of interesting ideas in the first story, "Nussia", about an earth family hosting an alien youth not long after first contact. It ended up much my darker than I was expecting.

Neat bit of synchronicity that the first story involves alien first contact while I'm also reading another book about aliens landing on Earth.