jdavidhacker1 reviewed Seventh son by Orson Scott Card (The tales of Alvin Maker -- [1])
None
2 stars
I'm a huge fan of Ender's Game, and everything Ender related. Its very likely you are as well, if you're reading OSC unless you picked this book up by accident. I'm even a fan of quite a bit of OSC's short fiction. Despite some of the deeply ingrained cultural ideas of Mormonism, I think there's a lot of thought and complexity going on in a lot of what he's written, reflecting some real internal strife.returnSeventh Son is...none of that. The general idea of old american (and apparently in later books, other cultural traditions') folklore and folk-magic by and large being real is a great conceit to start from. There's a lot to explore, including the clash of more organized religion and the folk traditions. The non-white traditions and peoples aren't handled to well in this initial book, though I'm told that improves somewhat over the course of the series. I …
I'm a huge fan of Ender's Game, and everything Ender related. Its very likely you are as well, if you're reading OSC unless you picked this book up by accident. I'm even a fan of quite a bit of OSC's short fiction. Despite some of the deeply ingrained cultural ideas of Mormonism, I think there's a lot of thought and complexity going on in a lot of what he's written, reflecting some real internal strife.returnSeventh Son is...none of that. The general idea of old american (and apparently in later books, other cultural traditions') folklore and folk-magic by and large being real is a great conceit to start from. There's a lot to explore, including the clash of more organized religion and the folk traditions. The non-white traditions and peoples aren't handled to well in this initial book, though I'm told that improves somewhat over the course of the series. I would even have settled for a more fantastic and straightforward treatment of Mormon beliefs as magic.returnUnfortunately, what we mostly end up with is a relatively shallow good vs. evil (couched as 'maker' vs. 'unmaker') story, where the both the good and bad guys are relatively one-dimensional, lacking the ethical and moral grey areas OSC handles so well in Ender. It also ends up really heavily skewed towards christian beliefs and mythos, with even the maker and unmaker ideas being very thinly veiled christ/antichrist or divine/satan metaphors. It feels a little like religious propaganda as it stands. Making it focus on a child hero, like Ender, was also an odd choice, given that that there is none of the same sort of ethical struggle surrounding using a child as a savior regardless of the personal costs.returnUnless it was going to be more anthology series, with each book touching on different tales of folk traditions in the americas (or elsewhere) being real, I think this might have also been better off wrapped up in one, longer novel rather than the extended series.returnIts a pretty light/rapid read, but probably not worth seeking out.
