I was intrigued by the book jacket description, and I've enjoyed almost every book I've read by this author, but found myself disappointed in several issues and descriptions. It reminded me of a sci-fi version of a cross between the Odyssey and Gulliver's Travels (neither of which are personal favorites).

Well this was an interesting read. A book that at times is so bad, is so ridiculous, it's good!

Don't get me wrong, this book has a lot of obvious problems going for it, but compared to the other crud he has written, this is his BEST book.

Let's be honest, "Squeaker For The Bread" was a dreary read, and "Insecticide" was absolutely atrociously boring, so there's no comparison there. As for "Ender's Game", I reread it for the first time in 35 years and it did not hold up well at all. Dated and boring. I had to take a week off halfway through the drudgery of that book before I could finish it.

This book though, I was so caught up in the story I breezed through it in 2 days. And what a difference in the writing style compared to his later writings.

There was none of his preaching going on. No blab blab god blab drone blab god blab etc. That was a thankful relief.

Also the writing wasn't flat, dull, dreary, boring and uninteresting like in his other books.

In fact through the first 90 pages I was constantly laughing out loud as OSC struggled with his homophobia and his attempts to understand the nature of transgenderism. Someone needs to enlighten OSC and tell him, being transgendered is NOT a curse, but a blessing.

Also, there was one point where I was in hysterics as Lanik, our main character, was trying to chop off his double that was growing out of him with a rock and smash its brain in to kill it. It was so ridiculous and over the top it was hilarious. Reminded me of the movie "Basket Case" for some reason, lol.

This book makes me wish OSC had continued to write wierd stuff like this. He might of actually become an interesting writer instead of the preachy old bore he is now.

In sum: 0☆'s because OSC is bomophobic.

I'd give it a star and a half. The story was cool, but right in the middle of the book, the plot ended and a new one started. It should have been 2 books, the first and a sequel. Also, it was really uninentionally funny, the extra arms and tits everywhere, and the way the main character would look at his breasts and feel maternal, hilarious. The writing was terrible, cheesy, the characters flat, the special powers were played out like a geek who gets picked on at school wishing he could do THIS and THIS to his enemies. I read Ender's Game a few years ago, and thought it was much better. I have to give the writer the benefit of a doubt, you know, it was his second book I think.

Good book. Easy to read and stay engaged with. It has that classic feel of a 70's or 80's science fiction novel, along with the sensibilities of the time. If you are easily offended this might be problematic for you. It leaves one contemplating humanity's need for war, and conquest and does truly make one think. That said, this is clearly one of Card's early works, and is not perfect. The love interest in not fleshed out, and for the most part is meaningless to the story. I am left wondering why he cares about her at all. That said this is a fun book if you want to a classic SF read.

"Armies thundered on my skin, death in every heart, with dead trees carved to make tools to build more death. Only the voices of men are louder than the voices of trees, and though a million stalks of wheat whisper terribly together as they die, the death scream of a man is the strongest cry the earth can hear."

Despite my mixed feelings about the author, I rather enjoyed this early novel of his. As in Ender's Game, the style is very readable. There's some themes related to gender and race that I think would be fascinating to discuss in a group.

Related Reads:
Dune (Herbert)

This does not age well. I'm a bit forgiving considering how long ago it was written but the use of cultural tropes in describing black characters is offensive and harmful.

Starts weird, but GREAT ending

At first I wasn’t sure I liked this book, even though I’ve loved all of Card’s other books. If you are like me, keep reading and know that the main character, Lani, goes through many changes as the story progresses and as he gains knowledge and understanding. Once again, I was not disappointed by Card’s story or his skill as an author.

I read this years ago and liked it, but rereading it in 2023 was a huge letdown. Apparently, the author is still quite racist. There are so many things I forgot about, i.e. the protagonist has horses named Himmler and Hitler, and his family owns black slaves. A neighboring country called Nkumai is full of black physicists, that everyone disparagingly call "Inkers".

What the hell is this book's ending? The main character talks himself into committing genocide. He decides, based on the evidence of one angry guy he met by the shoreline, that the whole nation of Anderson needs to be killed. But later, by his own admission, he says some of their citizens are innocent. So why didn't he just use his god-like time powers to kill just the infiltrators and the leaders, then learn their illusion skills and teach them to others in order to protect the world from the Andersons? Or teach everyone else how to manipulate time to detect the Andersons? He could have put up some kind of natural barrier around Anderson to wall them off from the world. Or taken over Anderson and forced them to stop teaching illusion magic to their kids. Used genetic manipulation to remove the ability to use illusion magic. Just help Anderson develop some morality around their ability like the Schwartz's did. There were so many other options!

And the wise and ancient people of Schwartz didn't even consider any alternatives besides genocide, when their whole thing is being pacifists!!!! They go from "no way would we ever do that" to "you're right, there's no other option" seemingly in the space of ten minutes.

Another ethical dilemma that's resolved by simply ignoring it is that the main character's dad was conquering the surrounding nations. When the main character finds out that the illusionists did the same thing, he decides the entire Anderson society must die. He even thinks about how his dad was also a conqueror, but he dismisses it by saying his dad was just some innocent guy who didn't know any better than murdering people on the battlefield with his regenerating super soldiers to get his way. I know that the main character intentionally has some problematic views, but if this was the case, why doesn't anyone else in the story challenge him on that point?

Furthermore, there's no explanation for why he doesn't do more to help people at the end of the book, such as altering their genes to not require food and water. He keeps the magic to himself instead of sharing it, seemingly so that he can feel like a god among mortals and have them worshipping him. These poor people of Humping are sooo noble and poor, good salt of the earth folks, and yet he can't share any of his techniques with them because... he likes them better poor, I guess.

The main character supposedly struggles with the morality of killing, knowing that it would hurt himself and the planet, but then uses an earthquake to kill someone when he could just as well have used his god-like time manipulation to stab the guy. He had every opportunity to solve the problem any other way but instead he chose the most stupid option, presumably just to manufacture some lame controversy one chapter later. There was no need for that, when the discussion of the merits of genocide would have been more than enough controversy for any other book.

That's leaving out a lot of other issues with the book including racism, sexism, and terrible romance, but others have talked about them. I just wanted to point out how stupid the ending is.

It gets two stars because it still had some interesting ideas and I always appreciate that. However, the execution was so poor I don't think I could recommend this book to anyone.

Definitely one of cards better books. I really wish there was more in this universe, reminds me a little of the mistborn series although they're completely different. The world he created, the politics, the intrigue, the abilities, really interesting and surprisingly well balanced. What's most interesting is how some abilities that seems so inconvenient can be so useful. I wish there was more.

Not my favorite book by Card, but not bad. It definitely feels like an earlier book, the characters don't feel super well developed but the concept was decent. It needed some suspension of disbelief, and it probably doesn't help that I just finished Cordwainer Smith's Rediscovery of Man which contains many similar concepts.

Well, this is a tough one.

The conceit of a radical regenerative and many of the crazy consequences are brilliant. The world is fascinating and the numerous cultures unique and fleshed out. The story is gripping, progressively complicates, and the stakes raise into one heck of a climax.

The book ends brilliantly.

But then there's still 1/3 to go in which the main character wanders endlessly without purpose. The story loses all momentum. There don't seem to be any goals we're working toward. It's such a painful read to get through the rest of the pages. It makes no sense to me how such a good book could fall so flat for such a long, drawn-out ending.