I have read the author's science fiction books, and did not really like them. Granted, science fiction is not my favorite genre.
I have often felt that the Bible (strictly speaking about it as a historical work, not denying the spiritual value) was fairly male-centric. There are some great women in the Bible and I would like to know them better. Even as a fictional account (and we must never confuse fiction with reality) this story was well researched and very interesting.

After a little bit of a slow start for me, I really enjoyed this book. It's based loosely on Sarah and Abraham from the Bible. I really liked how this book made Sarah and Abraham "real" to me... sometimes I have a hard time doing that when I'm reading the Bible. I really felt for them, not being able to have a child for so long. Also, the struggles and trials that they went through- WOW!
This book also went into Lot and his wife. Part of this was rather humerous to me (how Lot's wife was portrayed in the book) and I got a glimpse of how evil Soddom really must have been.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I will definitely be reading the next book about Rebekah.

I enjoyed reading this depiction of Abraham and Sarah. It is fun to get some perspective on what life might have been like for them. I was surprised at the sensitivity shown for Sarah in this fictional account and the understanding the author had of what she must have felt when she was unable to conceive. Not to sound sexist, but most men don't understand the many different emotions and feelings that this trial causes in women and how utterly broken they often feel. I also loved how Sarah had great faith and strength, but still had doubts and fears. So easy to relate to her in this story.

Prolific Science Fiction/Fantasy author puts his pen to the service of narratin the lives of the Hebrew Matriarchs in The Women of Genesis series. Here Card beautifully and sensitively narrates the story Sarah, filling in the gaps with consumate and imaginative skill.

Unlike some novels, such as Sarah by Marek Halter and The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant, where the women are portayed as worshiping idols and other gods, Sarah is shown as a strong women, devoted to the service of Yahweh since she was little, as are the other matriarchs in the Women of Genesis series.

In this account, Sarai was ten years old, a bright and inquisitive child, when she first met the desert nomad and priest of Yaweh, Abram, who had come to her house to negotiate the marriage of his cousin Lot to the to Sarai's wilful and selfish sister, Qira. Abram captures little Sarai's heart, and and seals her destiny by promising that he will come back and marry her, within ten years.

Sarai, a princes of the Royal House of Ur, is promised by her father as a priestes to Asherah, but renounces this future, and instead devotes her herself to the worship of the one living G-D Yahweh.

Her prayers are answered soon after she prays for Abram to be spared by the vengeance of an Egyptian official, Suwertu-an earthquake shakes Ur and Suwertu is killed.

Abram and Sarai are married in a union of love and faith, joining the Royal House of Ur to the high priesthood of the Hebrew Nation. The epic of love, faith and peril follows from Haran to Canaan to Egypt and back to Canaan, where Abram and his tribe settle in Hebron.
Card gives us an interesting perspective on Sarai and Abram's experiences in Egypt where she is passed off as Abram's sister, rather than his wife.
Sarai's great kindnes to her handmaiden who she is given in Egypt, the Arab slave-girl Hagar.
The wickedness of Sarai's sister and Lot's wife Qira and the destruction of Sodom and Gommorah, and Qira's death there- only Lot and two of his daughters survive.

Finally Hagar's birth of Ishmail and Hagar's newfound spite against Sarah. The miraculous birth in Sarah's old age of Isaac (after G-D's promise), and the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmail from Abraham's household after Ishmail's brutality to the little Isaac.

The narrative is told with sensitivity and prose. The slight deviations from the Biblical account do not in any way take away from the spirit of the Biblical narrative. I actually preferred the idea of Qira being killed by the flames and lava, rather than being literally turned into a pillar of salt.
The author's Biblical understanding is supplemented by his comprehensive study of Canaan, Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Near East. What results is a living saga of love, courage and everlasting faith.

Where do I start with all the things I did NOT like about this book? First off - I don't care what people say, Orson Scott Card writes like a "Junior High" novelist. You know, all the books you had to read in jr. high? That's about the caliber of his writing. I'm sure his science fiction stuff is better, and he can weave an interesting plot, but his actual writing skills are pretty amateur. He uses the same descriptive words over and over, and tries so hard to describe whatever it is, that it comes across as weak. The plot of this book was somewhat interesting, but he took so many literary liberties that it was beneficial to fallow along in Genesis so you actually knew what he was talking about. He introduced main characters that hugely influenced the plot, but are not in the scriptures. Don't tell me this is a historical fiction when it is SO far off base, its astounding. Also, even though this book is about "Sarah"...I found her to be the most uninteresting, predictable character in the whole book! He should have called the book "Hagar" for she was much more interesting and well developed.

It took me a while to get into this but I finally picked it up again and finished it. It was ok but not great. I kept comparing to 'Sarah and After' by Lynne Reid Banks, another fictionalised account of the same story by a different author, and to my mind this fell far short. Something about the way it was written aggravated me. There were too many long, complicated, politically-charged conversations, where Person A would say something terribly careful and calculated, and Person B would think about how clever Person A was being and exactly what they were implying, but how they could see through their facade, then come up with an equally diplomatic reply that made Person A reflect the exact same things about what a clever answer it was and how it might be implying this or maybe THAT?? Meanwhile a total of about ten words have been exchanged and nothing has actually happened.

I thought the characters were a bit flat. Sarah was a boring Mary Sue type, perfect at everything, amazingly clever, soooo kind and patient, gorgeous, unselfish, blah blah. Abram the same. Hagar and Quira (Lot's wife) relentlessly awful manipulative shrews with no redeeming features.

The author's note at the end irritated me deeply. He kept saying it was just a fictionalised account and it didn't MATTER whether X or Y events actually happened as described in the Bible or as he described them in the book. But then he'd spend paragraphs trying to justify his interpretation, apparently convinced he's gotten it right where everyone else has gotten it wrong. Something about his whole tone just got on my nerves, it reminded me of one of those anti vaxxers who read a few spurious web pages and decide they're actually an expert because they've 'researched' it, so their opinion should be taken seriously.

I took a women in religion class in college where we were required to write our own account of a Biblical story, so of course I was interested in Orson Scott Card’s account. And it’s well written, it really is. It’s just so… Mormon. I don’t know how else to describe it. Card somehow canonizes the book of Abraham, the book of Enoch, the temple ceremony, and so much more that is so specific to the LDS faith. It’d actually be really interesting if I didn’t have any of my own personal feelings mixed in with it. An account of how an LDS man views the Bible (bc that’s what it is, really).

All that aside, the only thing that absolutely pushed my buttons was the villainization of Hagar and Lot’s wife (who in this account is Sarai’s sister?) & saintness of Sarah and Abraham. It just seemed so one-dimensional in comparison to the amazing accounts I have read contemplating how everyone is human, even “God’s chosen”. Hence the 2.5 stars.

I’ll read the other two books at some point, but I don’t know how I’ll feel about them.

Mixed feelings. It was good enough I will probably read the rest of the Women of Genesis series. I loved how strong Sarah was and how she was portrayed in a multi-faceted way. Strong, but still always doubting herself, her own faith, God. She didn't just stay one way and always stay strong. She had her strong days and her doubting days, like so many of us humans.

I also loved that Abraham also struggled and had conflicting feelings and was sometimes humbled. He was a good man and a great prophet and I think it helps me to know that even prophets are human.

However, I also felt that the characters, Sarah especially, acted and spoke in too modern a frame of mind. Too liberated. Honestly, though, who am I to know how women thought and acted then - it's just my own prejudices and assumptions. I could be wrong.

Thus, the mixed feelings.

When I was looking at the reviews, I was looking for something that would let me know if this was enjoyable to non-Christians (or despite that it is a Christian/Jewish story). I could only find one review on that issue and that was by someone who claimed to read a lot of fictionalized biblical literature and compared Sarah to that, but since I don't read almost any Christian fiction, I was still hesitant going in. My problem was not the religious element per se, but that it seems to me much Christian fiction is horribly written, but since it spreads the word of God/Christ, still gets great reviews (e.g., the Left Behind series). However, I was pleasantly surprised by Sarah. This is not a great work of literature, but it is a good story. I was curious about the characters and what was going to happen to them. I thought the book seemed well-researched and the portrayal of what daily life was like at the time was fascinating. I would strongly recommend this to anyone interested in learning more about the Bible and the stories it contains. If you are completely against anything biblical, don't waste your time with this read. You'll just get angry and the book isn't meant for you; without the biblical context -- so treating it only as a novel -- it's premise is unrealistic and the characterization thin. However, in the context in which it is meant to be read -- as a fictionalized development of a biblical story -- it is good. Do be warned that it is a Bible story, so you aren't going to get a new perspective on God or spirituality, but the way God is handled in Sarah is completely consistent with Christianity and does give one a lot to think about in terms of what God's will would mean for His people.

This book was definitely different than anything I've read before. The fact that it was technically a historical fiction from so long ago was a weird thing to wrap my head around. I had a hard time not getting to cynical about whether or not things really would have been the way Orson Scott Card wrote them. That being said if you go in thinking that it is a work of fiction and no one knew exactly how conversations would go or if they would live exactly the way that was imagined then it was a good read. I do love that it was the perspective of Sarah since we don't hear from women in the Bible too frequently. It definitely was an interesting concept and I would recommend it to many people I know. I will admit though I did end up reading Genesis to refresh what we really know about Abraham and Sarah after finishing the book to compare it to what was added. I do believe that Orson Scott Card did a good job with what we were given in the scriptures. I also thought the afterward by the author really added to the book and made it go from 3 stars to 4 for me. It provided a lot of insight as to why he went with certain things.

8/10. Media de los 43 libros leídos del autor : 8/10

43 obras que me he leído de Card y media de 8/10. Tela. Creo que eso lo dice todo, y liarme a hacer alabanzas de este autor-y de esta novela- es superfluo. Además El juego de Ender fue la primera novela que leí suya y caí enamorado.
Le he puesto nada menos que 10/10 a siete de sus novelas y 9/10 a otras ocho. Casi merece más la pena decir cuales de esas 43 suspenden; solo hay dos: Ruinas (Pathfinder#2) y Esperanza del venado.
Además solo otras 5 se llevarían tres estrellas. El resto, 4 o 5.

This book was really enjoyable. I loved the characters and especially loved the way that Card wrote Sarah. I felt he did an amazing job describing what she felt in regard to Hagar. It's a topic that rarely are writers (especially men) very good at addressing and I truly was happy with how he wrote her. However, I gave this one only 3 stars because I wished that he would have delved a little deeper in the relationship between Sarah and Abraham. Maybe this is because I read Rebekah first and loved how Rebekah and Isaac's relationship was written. You could definitely feel that Abraham and Sarah loved each other and were committed to each other but I don't think that Card gave enough of a foundation for that love. He seemed to just glance over it accepting that the reader would already know they deeply loved each other. And while, yes, I do know that, considering this is a story of their lives together I wished the building of their love would have had a more central part. All in all I really enjoyed it. A loving quick read that sparked a desire to read again the Bible accounts.