Pathfinder
Aug. 8th, 2011 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
checkers65477I haven't blogged about a book in ages, but this one was so good I feel compelled to mention it.
Pathfinder, by Orson Scott Card, is one of the best things I've read this year. This review is from Publisher's Weekly, 10/18/2010:
"Card entwines two stories in this fascinatingly complex series opener. In one, 13-year-old Rigg is living a contented life with his acerbic and intellectually challenging father as a backcountry trapper, using his magical ability to perceive paths that show the past movements of people and animals--anywhere from minutes to thousands of years earlier. Then his father dies suddenly, and Rigg becomes an outcast with his friend Umbo, after Rigg is wrongly blamed for Umbo's brother's death. Interwoven is the story of starship captain Ram Odin, whose interspatial jump toward a new colony world results in a bizarre paradox with far-reaching consequences. The result is an amalgamation of adventure, politics, and time travel that invokes issues of class and the right to control one's own life. Yet despite its complexity, the book is never less than page-turning. While Card delves deeply into his story's knotted twists and turns, readers should have no trouble following the philosophical and scientific mysteries, which the characters are parsing right along with them. An epic in the best sense, and not simply because the twin stories stretch across centuries."
Like McKinley's Pegasus, I didn't know this was the first in a series. I'm usually put off a little by super-long books, but though Pathfinder is 657 pages, I flew through it (ha, for me that is) and was sorry when it ended. And unlike Pegasus, I was delighted to find that there will be more coming in the Pathfinder series. It will be hard to wait for the next book.
I hope the next in the series features more of Rigg's sister Param. It's not that she was a favorite character, but more that I needed a female in there somewhere. She started out weak and invisible, but by the end of the book had started to come into her own. Hell, I wouldn't mind an entire book about Ram Odin and his colonization of a the planet. Both stories were thrilling and fun.
Pathfinder, by Orson Scott Card, is one of the best things I've read this year. This review is from Publisher's Weekly, 10/18/2010:
"Card entwines two stories in this fascinatingly complex series opener. In one, 13-year-old Rigg is living a contented life with his acerbic and intellectually challenging father as a backcountry trapper, using his magical ability to perceive paths that show the past movements of people and animals--anywhere from minutes to thousands of years earlier. Then his father dies suddenly, and Rigg becomes an outcast with his friend Umbo, after Rigg is wrongly blamed for Umbo's brother's death. Interwoven is the story of starship captain Ram Odin, whose interspatial jump toward a new colony world results in a bizarre paradox with far-reaching consequences. The result is an amalgamation of adventure, politics, and time travel that invokes issues of class and the right to control one's own life. Yet despite its complexity, the book is never less than page-turning. While Card delves deeply into his story's knotted twists and turns, readers should have no trouble following the philosophical and scientific mysteries, which the characters are parsing right along with them. An epic in the best sense, and not simply because the twin stories stretch across centuries."
Like McKinley's Pegasus, I didn't know this was the first in a series. I'm usually put off a little by super-long books, but though Pathfinder is 657 pages, I flew through it (ha, for me that is) and was sorry when it ended. And unlike Pegasus, I was delighted to find that there will be more coming in the Pathfinder series. It will be hard to wait for the next book.
I hope the next in the series features more of Rigg's sister Param. It's not that she was a favorite character, but more that I needed a female in there somewhere. She started out weak and invisible, but by the end of the book had started to come into her own. Hell, I wouldn't mind an entire book about Ram Odin and his colonization of a the planet. Both stories were thrilling and fun.
