"The Worthing Chronicle" eBook was published in 2016 (paper edition originally published in 1983) and was written by Orson Scott Card (http://www.hatrack.com). Mr. Card has published nearly 80 novels. This is the third novel in his ‘Worthing’ series.

I received a galley of this novel for review through https://www.netgalley.com. I categorize this novel as ‘PG’ because it contains scenes of Violence and Mature Situations. This Science Fiction novel is set in the far future. While humanity has spread across the universe, some settled planets have fallen backwards into an agrarian life style.

The story takes place on one such planet with three major characters: Jason Worthing, a former Star Ship pilot with the ability to read minds; Justice, a young woman with extensive mental capabilities; and Lared, a teenage native of the agrarian world.

Jason and Justice arrive on the planet and approach Lared. They join in the simple life that Lared and his remote village have, but they engage Lared to capture their story. Justice is able to put dreams into Lared's head at night that are the memories of Jason.

Lared records the dreams with ink and parchment over several months. The stories tell how Jason was persecuted because of his abilities. He was finally able to escape, piloting a colony ship. While his ship was attacked, causing many of the colonists to be lost, he was able to settle a world with the survivors.

Jason uses the suspension capability developed for multi year space flight to slow his aging, appearing to the colony only every few years. Because of the attack in route, the colony had to start from a very basic agrarian civilization.

I spend about 8 hours reading this 275 page novel. It was . . . interesting. This is the fourth book of Card's that I have read. The only one I found exceptional was the first, "Ender's Game". This book seemed more of a collection of short stories as you read a sequence of memories that Lared dreams. These cover many years of time. I found it very slow and it felt far longer than the 275 pages. I give this novel a 3.5 (rounded up to 4) out of 5.

Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at http://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/.

I actually liked this book better than I thought I would while I was reading the first chapters. It just got more and more engaging. I'm fascinated that Orson Scott Card did so much historical research on the book. Of course I have different opinions on how the story could have gone down, but this was an interesting perspective.

I don't mean to sound harsh in my critique but this book left me wanting in many ways. I read the author's explainations for his rendering of the biblical Sarah, and agree that he was justified in his plot lines. In fact, the plot is not really what is wanting but rather it feels like he tried so hard to make her a believable woman, and identifiable with all women, that he forgot to make her wonderful. She has very ordinary processes of thought, sub-par persuasion, and in matters of Godly worth and wisdom she comes across as fairly idiotic. On a personal note, I detest bad dialogue and the dialogue in this book is pretty terrible. I expected more from the acclaimed author of Ender's Game.
With that out of the way, I was pretty wrapped up in this book for a few days and my thoughts still linger on the setting. Sarah is and always has been a beautiful woman of countless virtues in my mind and I really appreciated having a painted environment to see her in. I look forward to enjoying the collection of the Women of Genesis as told by Orson Scott Card...just with anticipations more in tolerance with badly written dialogue.

I was familiar with this Old Testament story, but Orson Scott Card does a nice job of making the events come to life. As he explains in the epilogue, he includes a lot of historical information from other sources, which gives it an authentic feel. Of course, the story ends at a pivotal moment, foreshadowing the next book in the series, Rebecca (Isaac's wife).

To be fair, I didn't find this as enthralling as Anita Diamant's recasting of another Old Testament tale in The Red Tent, but perhaps that's partially because her story was my first encounter with the culture.

BTW, I listened to the audiobook and it was easy to follow.

First I must say I normally like Orson Scott Card. However, this was a stretch and too much I must say as a reader - though as a writer it was marginally worthwhile. If you are a writer of SciFi the story is a great study of ideas and concepts. That said, the story is written about as removed from the action as humanly possible in almost a term paper like dissertation of ideas.

That is, the "real time" story is about farming community going about their day to day tasks no longer protected from pain and the human condition by outside intervention. The "meat" of the story is about a boy scribe writing down a visitor's observations (1st indirection.) The visitor is telling his life story to a boy scribe. (2nd indirection.) In this story the visitor tells he is also a "servant" of another character. (3rd indirection.) And always the story is in the past. (5th indirection)

This is not like the good use of "book ends" to ground the story in the present with the reader and yet there is a threat in the present (aka a ticking time bomb beneath the dining room table.) Throughout the story, it drifts in and out from the present to the already happened past - basically one huge flash back with some jarring context switches to remind you none of it is of consequence - well except whether they can farm ok in the present - not exactly science fiction, eh?

If the characters were deep and interesting with deep seeded conflicts, it would be engaging at least at one level. But there is a lot of the boy reading the visitor's mind and explaining what he knows that the visitor knows about other character's in the past and why those distantly removed characters did something. It is like looking at the reflection in a window of a bathroom mirror, showing the living room where there is a TV showing the movie High Spirits. And then periodically someone steps in front of the mirror and describes what the characters in High Spirits are thinking. Ug. Double ug.

Worse the "adult" in the story seems about as childish and inexperienced as the boy scribe. For someone who has lived everywhere and done everything he is incredibly preoccupied with little things and easily uneased by observations of the less experienced boy. Innocence can jar by showing you truths forgotten out of adaptation. That is not the case here. How this visitor made it to adulthood, much less to be the oldest human being requires too much story Kool-Aid drinking (aka suspension of belief.)

So if I was reading this as a reader I think I would have shot myself in the head already (and given it two stars.) BUT some of the ideas are interesting and as a writer I found it did spark my imagination enough to get 3 stars.

My biggest problem with this book is fundamental. How appropriate is it to give a prophet characteristics and opinions that you do not know existed. Plus, it is just hard to imagine Abraham with such a modern turn of phrase, for example: "Don't worry about a thing Hagar, I'll take care of it." Or discussing the prophet's impotence?!? The only reason I gave it two stars was that it was quick. I'll pass on the others in the Women of Genesis series and stick to the Bible.

I really liked this book--it's similar to "The Red Tent," except not quite so harsh. The story is absorbing, and while it's obvious that Card takes some pretty big liberties, I thought it was for the most part quite believable. It's always uncomfortable for me to see revered figures such as Sarah and Abraham humanized, with less than admirable thoughts and feelings. And I don't agree with his portrayals completely, but he does make you stop and think about what these people really went through-and how they were refined in the process.

Fun historical/biblical fiction

Realizing Card had to use all kinds of literary license to create the details in this book, I'm finding I'm eager to daily turn to Genesis or the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price to read and compare the details the scriptures give. I suppose that's why I love historical fiction so much. It never fails to drive me to study other sources. What a great way to study history.

I like the wise and noble characters Card rightly-so painted Sarah and Abraham to be. They're two people from history who deserve to be known.

Card's a good writer. I like the fact that he handled very discreetly, issues in this story other authors might handle very indiscreetly. He hasn't always been known to do that and that's why I've avoided some of his books.

Made it 1.5 hours in (listening) before giving up in disgust. Male author has a very clear agenda of what a righteous woman “should” be and it is nothing like what a real woman is. Reads like propaganda for republican motherhood (or the early-aughts personal progress manual). I can’t tell if this guy is malicious or just clueless.
Maybe it gets better, couldn’t tell ya. I kept telling myself to stick it out, that maybe there was some good stuff later on, even after the 10-year-old girl inexplicably abandons a divine feminine goddess for a male god after a hot adult man tells her that gods have “no use for [her] except to see her be married and raise her children to serve God.” (Saying the quiet part out loud, are we now?) But then I lost it at the Johnny Lingo cow scene. For real?

Because this is the story of one of my favorite heroines I feel like I should give this a better rating, but a 3 star "liked it" is the best I can do. It is well researched and interesting, but not entertaining. I didn't love the writing, in part because the dialog is, well...lacking, as is the one-dimensional character development. Somehow these wonderful characters were not "fleshed out." I feel he did a better job with Rebekah. I very much enjoyed reading his "afterword."
Favorite quotes:
“Faith doesn't mean you never doubt. It only means you never act upon your doubts.”
“Sometimes happiness consists of finding the right balance of misery.”

I really liked the idea of what Card was trying to do with this novel: to take the very limited view of what happened to one of the women of the old testament and flesh it out into an interesting story. And he was successful, by and large. The story was quite interesting, and Card's admitted literary license fleshed out Sarah and her family to a certain extent.

But there are a couple of reasons I didn't enjoy this story as much as I hoped I would. For starters, the characters, while fleshed out, seemed a little one-dimensional. I suppose that is what happens when you tell a story from the point of view of a single character...the reader sees what the character sees, whether or not it's the complete story. But the "fleshed out" characters in this arc seemed to be lacking in any real arc that made them grow or change. The characters were, essentially, the exact same people at the end of the book as they were at the beginning, and all that changed was their situation.

Secondly, this is a personal preference, but Card made the choice to write in a voice that is a little affected--rather like the language of the King James version of the Bible itself. As a reader, I read books like this to make the stories and characters of the Bible more relatable. Instead, this tone seemed to distance the characters from me as a reader. As I mentioned previously, this is personal preference, but it was disappointing to me.

As it is, I found this novel interesting enough that I will likely read the remaining novels in the series.