Orson Scott Card really has everything in this book. Great characters, great story, great themes, and a great setting. I picked up this book because of it's inspirations from the Book of Mormon, which I just find fascinating. I can definitely see some of them here, although I think they will play out even further in the next books of the series. This book has some really interesting themes about faith, religion, about action vs inaction, and about trust. There are also themes about gender and po...

What an interesting and odd book. I think it was a good idea that I found out in advance that this was a retelling of the Book of Mormon, because I was more understanding of what Card was doing in terms of describing a "chosen one" both in a fantasy sense but also as an apology for revelation in the real world. But there's a central problem here. The entire premise hangs on the idea that the God of this universe is a computer created by people. That being the case, and especially since the chara...

Here's the biggest problem with this book: Card's a terrible world-builder. (Okay, the biggest problem might've been that whoever edited this book didn't feel comfortable telling Orson Scott Card that big chunks needed to be rewritten or scrapped, but I can't be too hard on our hypothetical editor: this book came out in 92, right when Card was big.) Sure, he's fine when telling us about his world - this is a book about a matriarchy, a city ruled by women, a city where women hold power, and no ma...

I liked the character construction - real, with strengths and flaws. Even the negative ones are likeable (well, except Meb, i couldn't identify with him whatsoever).
Also, the inner thoughts inserted between the dialogue, to see what the character really thinks but doesn't say - I totally dig that :)

The first I realized right off the bat was that this book was a retelling of the "Book of Mormon." Not the entertaining (and not-so-accurate) musical, but the actual book. Instead of Nephi, the main character is called Nafai. His brothers Laman, Lemuel, and Sam become Elemak, Mebbekew, and Issib. And instead of God leading the way, it's the Oversoul, a supercomputer that watches over humanity on the planet Harmony over the past forty million years.At first I thought this was pretty cool and a ne...

I haven't set aside a shelf titled "science-fantasy" but now and then there are books that should be called that. This is a slightly odd book in a couple of ways. It's firmly a fantasy but set in a science fiction universe with a science fiction set-up. I found the book's opening interesting and was drawn into the story. Sadly it tends to lag badly in several places gets bogged down often. Aside from that the story itself is an interesting one and I think many will like it.There is something I f...

I'm not an Orson Scott Card hater and though I despise many of his politcal views I am a fan of a lot of his work, especially the Ender Game series which think is terrific. This one, I just didn't like. It wasn't horrible, but it is certainly nowhere near as good as the Ender series. Plus, all of the things that I don't like about Card (e.g., politics and moralizing) seemed to be front and center in this story. It was just too much and I didn't enjoy reading it.

This series had good potential, and I liked this novel, but once the series started getting "preachy" I dropped it like a hot potato. Card is a perfectly decent writer, though his style is pretty straightforward and lacking much flourish, but he let's his personal beliefs creep into most of his works. If it were just a couple of his novels that were thinly veiled Mormon mythologies it would be fine, but a large percentage of his later work is very colored by his religious beliefs. This novel and...

I really enjoyed reading this book. I liked the descriptions of the cultural and political systems used in the setting as they are very different from any other kind I have known of. I have also gotten to like many of the characters, and even some of their strange names, though a few of them still bother me (such as "Luet").The only reason that I gave this book four stars rather than five is that I would have liked for it to surprise me a bit more. Being very familiar with the story that it is b...

I liked this whole sci-fi series. I've heard that it has a lot of Mormon themes in it (the author is Mormon or lapsed Mormon or something like that) but to be honest, I didn't notice it at the time I was reading it and it didn't interfere with my enjoyment. Dramatic stories, fun characters, big mysterious computers...