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1.0étoiles sur 5
Here Ends the Series, Jui 2 2006
Despite its resonance of incompleteness, I enjoyed Seventh Son -- it set up an intriguing premise and set of characters, and created great expectations for the rest of the series. Red Prophet succeeded mostly, except for the long resolution after the Tippy-Canoe slaughter (the Chapter 'Becca's Loom' should've been cut)
Prentice Alvin, however, has brought the series in a direction I did not expect.
(1) The plot is uninteresting. Ultimately, its a sappy love story mixed with moral preaching. Peggy becomes a main character -- Card spends almost half the book from her point of view, in which time, nothing happens. I continually found parts exhausting, so I started scanning, and finished the book in a few hours, with no loss of information, and great disappointment.
(2) As for the moral preaching aspect, Alvin's conflicts with the Unmaker become almost secondary, it seems, and instead the main conflict in the novel is about saving a black boy. One of Card's continuing themes is racism and discrimination, which is unsurprising because of the era and as it is after all, Card, the Mormon moralist, who we're talking about here. But I found that focus uninteresting. Thousands of authors have already done a much better job than Card on commenting on racism. And besides, all we learn from it in the book is that Card's solution to racism is to turn blacks white, which Alvin actually does with the black boy Arthur Stuart (*cough* is Card a Michael Jackson fan?).
(3) What happened to Alvin? In this volume, it seems that all the change that Alvin went through in Red Prophet was ignored. With all the skill of the Redman and of being a Maker, why is it, exactly, that Alvin even 'has to' go to be a prentice to a smith in the first place? What's the point? As a maker, Alvin is already naturally better than his Master -- Card even writes that Alvin even knew that Makepeace Smith wasn't teaching him anything...so why does Alvin just hand around and take Smith's abuse for about seven years? It just really doesn't make sense, and it didn't seem in sync with Alvin's character...and Alvin's character does not seem to develop much in this volume.
(4) The golden plow and the whole concept behind it was not cool, it was just stupid and corny.
In conclusion, don't read this book. I'm stopping the series here, I've lost all interest and care for the plot and characters. Don't even start this series, you'll just be disappointed. And by the sounds of the reviews of the next books in this series, each one gets worse. The only really good Card I've read has been the Ender series. I stopped Homecoming at book three, also.
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4.0étoiles sur 5
Great characters, good continuing story of Alvin Maker, Janv. 26 2004
I originally read this several years ago, but decided to re-read this when I got the new book in the series. This book was very good, both as the continuing story of Alvin Maker as well as the new story in this book with Arthur Staurt.I really enjoyed the new depth to some of the characters that were introduced in previous books, but were more central to the story in this book. Also, the new characters, such as Arthur Stuart and Mock Berry were very good as well. The only thing I didn't like about this book was there is a point where Alvin has to do something very difficult, and while it is a very clever solution to the problem at hand, it seems like there was a much easier solution available that was not even mentioned. But that was just a minor problem, and didn't detract much from a great story. If you've read Seventh Son and Red Prophet, you should definitely continue the story with this book.
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4.0étoiles sur 5
The series continues with solid levels of quality, Janv. 11 2004
Alvin has begun his "prenticeship" and though he comes to Hattrack river mostly to speak to the girl, Peggy, who, as a torch, had the ability to show him his futures and is likely the only person who can help him figure out how to be a real Maker, she flees before he even arrives.
This is a split story for most of the duration, flickering from Alvin on one side, to Peggy on the other, and converging near the end. Alvin's apprenticeship is very interesting, but it is Peggy's story I'm really starting to enjoy more. Peggy is a torch - someone with the knack to see futures in the heartfires of folk, and her own future is intertwined with Alvin's. But when she sees that her own future is a loveless one if she waits for Alvin to arrive, she does the unthinkable - she runs away, to find a way to at least have love for Alvin, if not love from him. Her determination to thwart her own gifts of futuresight is a joy to read, and her strength of character - somewhat rare for female characters in a lot of fantasy works - is a nice change. Very enjoyable.
So is where the tale ends, with a bit more magic than usual, and a set-up for the next story that I'm glad I didn't have to wait years for - like all the other folk who've been reading this series since book one.
'Nathan
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