Series: Book 1 in the Pathfinder series
Rating: Not rated
Tags: EN-Alire, Lang:en
Summary
The
first in a series, Card’s latest title has much in common
with his Ender Wiggins books: precocious teens with
complementary special talents, callously manipulative
government authorities, endlessly creative worlds, and
Card’s refusal to dumb down a plot for a young audience.
Here he takes the notions of folding space and time, embracing
paradox, “adopting a rule set in which . . . causality .
. . controls reality, regardless of where it occurs on the
timeline.” Thirteen-year-old Rigg is a Pathfinder, one
who sees the paths of others’ pasts. Rigorously trained
and thoroughly educated by his demanding father, Rigg is
horrified when Father dies unexpectedly after a final order to
find the sister he never knew he had. Rigg is accompanied on
this journey by a small group of friends who have powers of
bending and manipulating the flow of time. Card also skillfully
twines a separate story line into the plot, featuring
earth’s colonization of distant planets, led by the
idealistic young pilot Ram Odin. Fast paced and thoroughly
engrossing, the 650-plus pages fly by, challenging readers to
care about and grasp sophisticated, confusing, and captivating
ideas. As in L’Engle’s Time Quartet, science is
secondary to the human need to connect with others, but Card
does not shy away from full and fascinating discussions of the
paradoxical worlds he has created. Grades 8-12. --Debbie
Carton
