Read RED PROPHET for Alvin, his growing up, his kindness, and his family. Don't read it for the division between Reds and Whites. In Card's fantasy America, Reds are connected with the land as part of one body. They feel it and it supports them. Whites poison the land wherever they spread. Alvin accompanies Red general Ta-Kumsaw in a war against the Whites, a war which the Red Prophet understands will lead to the best solution possible for all the people living in North America.

Two good elements of this book stick in my head. The sensation of Reds running through the forest to the sound of green music. The politics of particular Frenchmen in America, with La Fayette having to make a different kind of contribution to America's freedom when Napoleon is exiled to this faraway wilderness. One bad element sticks in my mind. In the Tales of Alvin Maker, this version of Card's often-changing viewpoint, Reds are collectively ideal and Whites are collectively toxic. The people he writes about reflect the normal range of character in all races, but his generalization is completely laudatory or completely condemning.

This is not my favourite in the series because it always feels like the plot of the book, the main one has been put aside for it. For some reason I like Prentice Alvin better.

These books are amazing. Orson Scott Card, wow. To think I was disappointed at the beginning of the first book because it wasn't based in space or the future.

True rating: 2.5 stars - It's was ok, an average book.

This book was a bit of a let down from the first book in this series Seventh Son, as I didn't like the plot in this book nearly as much, with it's Red man vs. White man story line alternate history, which the alternate history thing in these books so far had been interesting, but in this story it feel like Card took the least interesting part of that alternate history and bludgeon me the reader to death with it, and thus my rating suffered accordingly.

A book review of "Red Prophet" - by Orson Scott Card

Being the generational bi-product of the white and the red peoples (my great great (maybe one more great) grandmother walked the trail of tears- a full blooded Cherokee), this book was particularly startling/heart breaking to me. To see, even if contrived, Cards artists impression as seen through the eyes of the first and birthright citizens of the Americas: "The Red Man", I feel as though I finally understand some of the most hidden longings/propensities of my soul. To be outside, away from civilization - to be one with the land. Often I find myself feeling apart from the very land itself. To use Cards imagery, the inheritor of the "corpse of the land" instead of the of the living land, free of the unstoppable hands of man-made industry. There are so few corners of the world that still produce the "green music" (the undisturbed innocence of the land). And I long for those places. I think we all do.

Card has a particularly Interesting way of inspiring the most insatiable curiosity about whatever he is writing about. I've been Inspired to start reading more history, determined to find more of myself in my ancestors past. Because we are only a recent product of all those decisions of our ancestors. Although we are saturated with modern technology and information, we are all a product of our genealogy and our past.

This novel is all the more relevant because it makes us come face to face with the evil that (perhaps) our ancestors participated in, and prays us answer the question: now that you see how the threads of time have unfurled, would you have been one of the ones stirring up dissension and war and hate not so many years ago? We all deserve to subject ourselves to these questions. Because we have no hope of weaving the future any different if we do not see how we first wove the past.

-sincerely

-Daniel Fox Johnston

This story took a long time to get into, but after they got back to the main story the last 100 pages were easy to fly through. I feel bad for the curse on the town, but it is deserved.

Continuing from the previous book in the Alvin Maker series, Red Prophet flashes back and shows certain events from a different point of view before driving forward into some fascinating alternate history. I continue to enjoy the fantastical elements brought into American history, even to the point of explaining how certain famous historical figures were the way they were. Although, if you know enough history, you’ll realize the fates of some of the characters presented in Red Prophet (William Henry Harrison, for instance) might not need the foreshadowing missing from this text.

While Seventh Son managed to set up this alternate history and establish some of its rules, Red Prophet delves into the action and excitement that comes from some of the more “kinetic” talents of these characters. Once the plot catches up with where Seventh Son left off, I was hooked. The interactions between Alvin and the Native Americans were quite interesting, and I found everything up until the climactic battle to be top-notch storytelling. Sure, it took a little while to get there, having to first set up the eponymous “Red Prophet” and his powers of observation, but it was worth it in the end.

My one qualm with this book lies in some of its more peculiar metaphor, allegory, and allusion. Near the end of the book, several scenes and sections feel entirely disjointed from the narrative. Perhaps they were to serve some “higher purpose” to lay out the moral of the story—or even the series as a whole. These scenes had characters who suddenly were ripped out of their normal behavior and put into a completely different context. And for what? To show that the history of the Native Americans is rich and varied while also infused with war and darkness? There had to be some other way to convey this than the way it was done here.

An action-packed follow-on to Seventh Son that gets a little too “heady” at times, I give Red Prophet 4.0 stars out of 5.
   

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I really thought the continuing saga of Alvin Maker in the alternate history of North America would be good. Alas, this book felt completely forced and convoluted. Plus, the basic thread plot of book #1 (Seventh Son) was either lost or ignored (maybe for book #3). What happened to the fantasy aspect? Where did the Unmaker go? The historical stereotypes were out of control with too many sidelines. I'm not going to continue this series - it was a real struggle to finish.

Card continues, in this second installment of his Alvin Maker series, to exhibit the same literary artistry that was evident in the first volume, Seventh Son (see my review of that title). There is no slackening of his excellent prose, credible characterization, and strong world- building. Where the first book revolved around Alvin and his family, however, this one finds him caught up in major events in his world.

In our world, the leaders of Native American resistance to White expansion in the Old Northwest were Tecumseh and his brother the Prophet, one the political/military leader, the other the spiritual leader. Both are in Card's world as well (the former spelled Ta-Kumsaw; here, Indian personal and place names are often transliterated differently, while still recognizable); but here the author posits a basic philosophical difference between the two that didn't exist in the real world: while his brother advocates armed military resistance to the whites, the Prophet counsels pacifism and a strategy based on Indian mysticism and magic. (Beginning in the first book, Alvin and the Prophet played pivotal roles in each other's lives; here, Card begins his narrative back when Alvin is six, in order to retell that episode from the Prophet's perspective.) His goal is a different outcome in the relations of Whites and Reds than the one we're familiar with; but that isn't a foregone conclusion, for despite the better relations between the two in Card's U.S. and the independent state of Apalachee, the frontier still harbors influential whites like Andrew Jackson who call for Indian removal --and those, like William Henry Harrison, plotting genocide and using whiskey as an instrument for it. And French authorities in Detroit still claim the Ohio valley and pay Indians for Anglo scalps. (Meanwhile, Canada's governor Lafayette plots with Robespierre for a French Revolution; and the French king's ablest general, Napoleon Bonaparte, dreams of military glory in his new assignment in North America.)

Unlike some Goodreads reviewers, I didn't find Card's Mormonism either obvious or intrusive in either book. The Prophet's spiritual message is centered in mystical communion with the land, without making any specific reference to Deity as such. In Card's alternate world, the bondedness of the Indians with the natural world is much more intense and real than it was in the actual world; and Card clearly sympathizes strongly with it, and with the Prophet's pacifism. Both of these are attitudes not characteristic of traditional Mormon thought, which didn't treat Indians very positively (the Book of Mormon regards their dark skin color as a curse imposed for spiritual shortcomings). Card, however, sees them as a virtual chosen race for stewardship of the New World, an attitude also evident in his story "America" in The Folk of the Fringe. If I have any criticism of this book, it would be that Card seems to dismiss any possibility that any way of life that deviates at all from that of traditional Indian culture (as he idealizes it) could ever hope to be compatible with responsible and sustainable care for the land and the natural world, and that whites are racially or culturally incapable of living in harmony with the earth. That isn't a viewpoint that encourages white readers to even try to incorporate a "green" ethic into their lifestyles! But even so, this is a really absorbing and rewarding novel, with a lot to say.

A pretty good, but somewhat bittersweet read.

Very creative incorporation of Lehi's dream and the Anti-Nephi-Lehies into the story!

This book is so terrible that I cannot fathom how anyone not only finishes it but gives it anything more than 1 star. I love OSC's Ender and Bean series, but this book is poorly written, poorly researched, and poorly edited. Card has admitted that he can't be bothered to keep track of his plots and characters, and so his other series are always overrun with errors and inconsistencies, and his lack of interest in research is apparent in this silly work of "historical"fiction. What historical fiction really means here is that Card inserts famous historical figures (such as Andrew Jackson) willy-nilly into a book of magical fiction about pioneer America.

The book's greatest crime, though, is that it is racist while trying not to be. Card hits the reader over the head with black-and-white characters who perform racism with so much naivete that it is painful to even listen to the book. This befuddles me, as Card so elegantly treats the gray dimension of the saga between good and evil in his other books. This is noble savage vs. evil white man vs. benevolent, wise, and chosen magical Miller family.