The X files Book

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.