Die Saat [literally: The Seed] is a novella by Karin Leroch. It has not been translated to English (yet).
Finished on: 29.9.2023

Plot:
When one day a strange Egg Tree grows in the family garden, it leaves none of the family members cold, though their reactions to it are all very different. Dad Chris questions why it is there in the first place. Mom Rita believes that the tree and its eggs are a gift. Son Rudi tries to eat one of the eggs and daughter Stella tries to hatch them. But what is really going on with the tree?

Die Saat is a strange little story that isn’t easily categorized. I definitely couldn’t guess where the story was headed. It is a bit too gender-stereotypical for my taste but given its shortness, it’s still rather enjoyable.

Die Saat reads like the kind of story written by somebody who isn’t too much into speculative fiction themself. I don’t know if that is actually the case for Leroch, but there is a certain oddness to the story that doesn’t seem to fit with general genre-savviness. When that happens, it can go very wrong, for example when somebody tries to reinvent a genre they don’t actually know or understand. In this case, though, it just gave the book a sense of unfitting that suits the story rather well.

What did rub me the wrong way, though, was the way the characters react so very gender-conformingly to the tree. Rudi dares to eat the fruit (and gains extra abilities for it). Chris is sceptical (and proven right in the end). And both Stella and Rita turn to nurturing and caring for the eggs and the tree. If Stella, for example, had wanted to study the tree and experiment on it or if she had used it as artistic inspiration (or or or), it would have already smoothed this over a little bit, but as is, the story seems to say that the female characters would turn to nurturing as a matter of course, because of their nature. That really didn’t work for me.

Other than that, it was a fine read, though. I wouldn’t have wanted it to be longer, but I enjoyed it while it lasted. Plus, as somebody always on the look-out for speculative fiction from Austria, it comes with a special bonus anyway.

Summarizing: Nice enough.