Sometime after winning the Nobel Prize, Buck broke away from the objectivity she had formerly viewed as a sacred literary precept, and didacticism became the dominant feature of her work. Dragon Seed is pure and simple propaganda, albeit for a noble cause. In addition, the plot is marred by the improbable Hollywood-style appearance of Mayli to save the day for the sexually humiliated Lao San. According to Paul Doyle, however, the style employed in Dragon Seed harks felicitously back to the "folk poetic" medium that Buck employed so deftly in The Good Earth. But whatever its failings, readers did not seem to mind.

Dragon Seed sold 400,000 copies in its original edition and was the third bestselling fiction title for 1942.