Tag: Pathfinder

Visitors (Pathfinder #3)

~ Bookstooge ~ 1 Comment

713b5d4334da637803081302ee918fbaThis review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot.wordpress.leafmarks.com & Bookstooge’s Reviews on the Road Facebook Group by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission.

Title: Visitors

Series: Pathfinder

Author: Orson Scott Card

Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars

Genre: SFF

Pages: 609

 

 

Synopsis:

Rigg, Noxon, Umbo and the others all do their own things to try to save the planet Garden.

Noxon returns to earth. Rigg and Umbo try to save one of the Walls and set things up for yet another wall and the facemask’ers.

Time and Causality bend, change, trade places and generally act in such a way that I am thankful we humans don’t have to deal with those actions and their consequences.

 

My Thoughts:

It has been 2 years since I read Ruin but to be honest, it feels like 2 months ago. I knocked off a half-star because I’m not sure how these books overall will stand up to re-reads.

Some of the other reviews I’d read stated that the readers were disappointed in the ending and so I was not really excited about this. Thankfully, this was on the same level as the previous 2 books, finishes the trilogy very nicely and still gave me lots of action and rationalistic beings acting rational.

Thank goodness.

Card put a lot of thought into the exigencies of time travel and how it would work AND what the moral implications of such would be. Like I said about the other books, this was a cool rush of cold water. Especially when I see all the crap out there about teens and romances and such. I want to scream out “Use your brains!!!” but obviously the characters in aforementioned books can’t do such, because their authors aren’t using theirs.

And if you’re thinking that is slam, it certainly is.

A lot of ideas from Ender’s Game are present, such as genocide, right and wrong, absolutes vs morals of the moment, etc. Also, if you’re expecting tense expectation, forget it. We’re dealing with multiple time travelers here, all of who want the same thing and are working towards the same goal.

Overall, I enjoyed this trilogy, am glad I bought them in hardcover and am glad that Card can still write some good stuff.

 

Ruins

~ Bookstooge ~ 1 Comment

ruinsRuins

Pathfinder #2

Orson Scott Card

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

 

As good as the first book was, I wasn’t sure if this book would live up to the premise of the first book, or lead me to a destructive crash like the starships from the first book.

Freaking fantastic. The same things that I liked about the first book are still here in this book. Rational people, figuring out their problems, figuring out WHAT their problems are and then doing something smart about it.

I was in the middle of Wives and Daughters, and the estrogen floating in that book made my brain boil. So the cool, calm, calculating rationalism in this book was like a cold refreshing drink on a hot humid day. It might not be totally fair to base my rating on THIS book on how I was reacting to another book, but you know what? Anything that bumps UP a book is a good thing in my eyes.

Not that any of the characters in Ruins are perfect, far from it. There is plenty of interpersonal problems, lots of cat fighting [hahahahaha, you’ll get just how amusing THAT statement is once you’ve read the book] and plenty of humanity showing in the group.

The intricacies of the plot, twisted even more so by Card’s indepth look at Time Travel, is great. I’ve really enjoyed this and am looking forward to the rest of the series. I just hope doesn’t pull a Jordan and die on us before he finishes the series, because I don’t see a Sanderson waiting in the wings to wrap things up.

Pathfinder

~ Bookstooge ~ 2 Comments

pathfinder (Custom)Pathfinder

Pathfinder #1

Orson Scott Card

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When your world gets filled with whiny, angsty, self-doubting, touchy-feely “men”, then read this for a young man, more of a boy, who is one of those characters of self-reliance, assured and doubt-less.

It is really refreshing to read about characters like this once in a while. Provides a nice granite bedrock for the changable waves of most fiction.

Lots of timetravel blabber, medieval era society, and hints of what humanity might become.

I skipped paragraphs at a time when time ‘movement’ was discussed and I don’t feel any less for it. But for those who like the convoluted, they might just eat it up.

And I really like how the first couple of paragraphs of each chapter deal with the very beginning of mankind traveling to this planet.