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Title: Earthborn by Orson Scott Card ISBN: 0-8125-3298-8 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 15 May, 1996 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.33 (36 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting Reading
Comment: Throughout this series Card has been playing with Biblical themes and characters on another planet 40 million years in the future, and then on Earth in the same time period. He now follows the Biblical track of jumping from 400 years before Christ to the time of the New Testament. There was the creation of sacred texts by the patriarchs (Nafai) that are now followed, to certain extents by the people of Earth. But just as in 1st century Palestine, many have grown legalistic in their pursuit of their religion, and are in need of revival. On the way he successfully limits the validity of the Mormon Native American myth, by comparing those tribes to an Islamic violent failed evolutionary stream that is only peripherally related to the main storyline.
In the meantime, in the downside of the series, only Shedemai remains from the original cast of the first four books. I miss the characters that Card drew so well, and wanted to know what happened to them- it felt like conflicts were still unresolved. But then, that is the way of the Bible too, where the point isn't the characters, the people, but the shadowy character behind the people, God. Shedemai's presence provides some measure of continuity, and also provides a nice setup for a Christ-figure to show up, as people begin to preach the religion of Love.
So here, we have a man who baptizes, speaking of another coming after him, and of the need for people to renew themselves in love, and return to the true religion of the Keeper, ala John the Baptist. We have the growth of the movement, and the resulting persecution. And one, close to the religion, breathing murderous threats, and then he is met on the road to Damascus.
None of this of course fits with the stories we find in the Gospels and Acts. Rather, Card seems to be taking the stories and themes of the New Testament and playing freely with them, to create new stories, using the same ideas in new ways. Though at times Shedemai is a Christ figure, with great power, coming from something like God Himself, with a huge ethic of service within love, and love of all peoples and species- she also does not know herself, and does not know the Keeper. But do not look here for anyone truly representing Jesus or God. This is in many ways poorly done allegory, as if Card is trying to represent Biblical themes and characters and yet can never adequately achieve true symbology. This is certainly work of fiction, and shows how truly fictional similar heretical attempts to recreate the Biblical storyline have been.
Through this Card shows what might have been the psychology of some of the heroes and anti-heroes of the Bible. The Old and New Testament sometimes don't lend themselves to the degree of psychological introspection we desire and have come to expect in modern novels. Here is one possibility for that introspection. And finally, what we have been waiting for for five books, what was hinted at all along, Shedemai gets to see who the Keeper of Earth truly is.
Rating: 2
Summary: Card seemed to have written himself into a corner
Comment: This book seems somehow disconnected from the first 4 in the series. Whereas they were solid science fiction novels that drew you in and made you want to know what happens next, "Earthborn" seems more like religious fiction in which Card has his characters engage in long, very un-compelling theological discussions.
The villians in this story are atheists. But they're atheists like one never finds outside of the minds of the religiously devout: thoroughly evil (their atheism is manifested by child-beating and cartoonish misogyny), unbelievably arrogant, and with their un-belief based on the most convoluted logic ever. It's a topic to be discussed elsewhere but I'll say it anyway: atheists are not as different from the devout as the devout love to think they are.
It feels as though Card started writing this series without quite thinking through how he was going to end it and, when he sat down to finish the series, he panicked and thus had to end it on this very vague, unsatisfactory note. The whole point of the series is to find the Keeper of Earth--which in the first book is very clearly described as the computer that created the Oversoul. But by this 5th book, Card had apparently changed his mind and decided that the Keeper of Earth is God.
But Card knows that you really can't put God into any sort of conventional story without obliterating the other characters and the story's conflict itself--so he has to sort of tiptoe around the edges of actually putting God into the story. And the result is, well, not a very good story.
Rating: 4
Summary: Good
Comment: My only issue with this book is that Shedemai (and the Oversoul) are the only charachters still around from the first book. It also get's into some deep religious overtones. In the end it's a good story though and well worth the read.
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Title: The Call of Earth by Orson Scott Card ISBN: 0812532619 Publisher: Tor Science Fiction Pub. Date: 15 January, 1994 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The Memory of Earth by Orson Scott Card ISBN: 0812532597 Publisher: Tor Science Fiction Pub. Date: 15 January, 1993 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Shadow Puppets (Ender, Book 7) by Orson Scott Card ISBN: 0765340054 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 03 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card ISBN: 0812565959 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 09 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card ISBN: 0812522397 Publisher: Tor Science Fiction Pub. Date: 15 June, 1997 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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