Customer Reviews

The Ships of Earth: Homecoming: Volume 5 (Homecoming (Blackstone Audio))

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

"The Ships of Earth" concludes the Harmony trilogy that is the first part of this five-book series. As the title indicates, Nafai and his family, following the advice of the Oversoul, the computer than has been watching over humanity for 40 million years after the supposed destruction of Earth, are approaching the object of their search through the desert: the craft that can take the Oversoul back to the legendary planet of origin for repair. However, the future of humanity becomes a secondary consideration in "The Ships of Earth" because the day of reckoning is finally coming between Nafai and his jealous, older half-brothers Ellemak and Mebbekew. This confrontation is long overdue and Orson Scott Card's way of resolving the issue is certainly insightful (which means he did not give in to the bloodlust that the story was inspiring in me).

Because the Oversoul is losing power, the planet Harmony is descending into chaos. The city of Basilica is now controlled by the forces of General Moozh, and the family of Wetchik (Nafai's father) has been cast into the desert. Whether they accept the will of the Oversoul or not, the family has to band together to survive. Meanwhile, the young Nafai pushes them towards their intended goal, no matter how fantastic and improbable it sounds. But the endless days in the desert allow Ellemak and Mebbekew to plot to end both their interminable quest and Nafai's power over the family.

Despite the science fiction aspects that drive this story, these first three novels resonate with elements straight out of the Old Testament. Nafai and his family are the "chosen people" of the Oversoul. The problem is that some of those people do not want to be chosen and they are quite jealous that a young brother has been placed over them. We are talking the exodus mixed with elements of the story of Joseph, albeit with brothers applying for the role of Cain. In light of such obvious parallels between these novels and the Bible, it seems strange that some would indict this series as Card passing off a thinly disguised version of the Book of Mormon.

This is not a great series from Card, but it is interesting and plays to his strength of creating characters and having them interact while living through interesting times. After "The Ships of Earth" the remaining two volumes almost seem anticlimactic; indeed, the final volume is almost an extended epilogue of sorts. Ironically, on the one hand I would have preferred to see the three Harmony volumes as a single work (I have them collected in a single volume), while on the other the Homecoming part of the series could have been expanded a lot more by Card.

Although it might not work as well as a stand-alone novel, this book continues the saga of the Wetchik clan as they follow the Oversoul through the desert to the place where humans first set foot on Harmony 40 million years perviously. The series is quite strong and I enjoyed this book much more because I was already familiar with the characters from the previous two. Card's writing focuses on character more than on the pure science-fiction of his tales and it makes them quite readable. All in all another well-crafted release from one of my favorite authors

Hatred, jealousy, envy, and conspiracy to murder are found in this novel......and the problem is that everybody involved is family!! This novel represents the third novel in the Homecoming series. And this novel turns the heat up in the brewing family feud.

Card does an excellent job in this novel of creating a strenous situation in Nafai's family. By the end of the novel, the blows will fall, and one person will be the victor. Card's ability to create complex characters is evident in this novel and thought provoking.

Another great part of this story is the history we learn when an individual finds the spaceships to earth. Now that they are almost going to Earth, pressure mounts, and a leader is needed. Who will it be?

On the downside of this, a lot of time has passed in this novel. Due to the time difference, it is hard to keep straight which parents have which children. I kept refering to the front pages to see who sired whom.

Overall, this book is a great addition to the series. It is well written, and has some great character development. Pressure is mounting in the family, and the ending is awesome. I would recommened this novle to anyone.

So, for those of you (there must be some) who are new to Orson Scott Card, Card is the Hugo and Nebula award winning author of Ender's Game, one of the great novels of all time, which happens to be Science Fiction. It is hard to say enough good about Card as an author. I am a self-confessed book junkie. My genre is not even science fiction but urban fantasy, nor am I Mormon (which will become relevant in a moment), and yet I still consider Card to be my favorite living author.

Card is probably strongest in two areas:
1. Developing characters we can empathize with
2. Developing sweeping, thought provoking themes of the meaning of life and God's relationship with man

And this book is no exception. It is thoroughly enjoyable. If there is a weakness to this book, one which has been mentioned by other reviewers, it is the rather (for Card) plodding plot. Let me attempt to provide some perspective on the plot...

This whole series, is actually a Sci/Fi recasting of one of the first stories of the Book of Mormon, which along with the Bible and various other works, is one of the canonized scriptures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. "The Mormons." The BOM story is that Lehi was a prophet of God during biblical times. He was called by God to depart into the wilderness with his own sons and another family's daughters. Lehi's faithful son, Nephi, (who will become the next prophet) is happily obedient. His brothers, Laman and Lemuel, murmur and rebel. The other brother is along for the ride but follows Nephi. (I'm paraphrasing). They go to the wilderness but must return to the city for their family history and for women to marry. Eventually, they build a ship and travel to the new world, where their descendants become the Native American peoples (more or less). Sound familiar?

My point is that the plot of the whole series is a historical allusion that has deep meaning and significance for those steeped in Mormon lore. For readers to whom that story has no intrinsic value, the plot may seem a bit pedestrian. So, you will need to judge for yourself whether or not you want to take a risk on a plot that does seem primarily a vehicle to reinforce the novel's outstandingly developed themes and characters.

If, like me, you read Card for his world settings, his thought-provoking themes, and his amazing characters, or if you are steeped in Mormon lore, then this is a must read book. Those seeking non-stop thrills should probably shop elsewhere.

You will definitely want to start with the first books in the series:

Earthfall (Homecoming Saga); Earthborn (Homecoming Saga)

And if this is your first experience with Card, then I highly recommend that you start with Ender's game and the accompanying series. Ender's Game Gift Edition (Ender Quartet)

General Moozh is now the leader of Basilica, but Nafai and his family must leave their home for good. The Oversoul has given them a quest, but everyone in the quest is not completely behind it. The Ships of Earth is the story of eight couples, married and not, family and not, loving and not, and their caravan across the wilds of planet Harmony. By the Oversoul's lead, they strike this journey to a place where they will depart Harmony and be bound for Earth, many light years away. But, the issue of leading the caravan leads to dissension among the travelers. Nafai's oldest half-brother Elemak is a born leader but is not overly sensitive to the Oversoul, something which Nafai is and that fact continually burns Elemak and his younger brother Mebbekew.

This is a wonderful study of a very small closed society and their travels across the land. Marriages, children, hunting, surviving, loving and fighting each other. Nafai's parents, Volemak and Rasa and married, but all the other "couples" have to decide if they are going to marry. This requires a change in customs. In Basilica, the women determined whether or not to continue the marriage contract each year. In the travels, it becomes necessary to remain monogamous in order to retain order. The Oversoul continually speaks to Nafai and his wife Luet, the water-seer and also Issib and his wife, Hushidh, warning them of treachery and guiding them through the lands.

The Ships of Earth is the third book in the Earthbound series by Orson Scott Card. He writes science fiction, fanstasy and historical fiction. Arguably, his most popular book is Ender's Game.

Veteran audiobook narrator Stefan Rudnicki reads The Ships of Earth, an unabridged audiobook rendition of the third volume of the "Homecoming" epic science fiction saga, by multiple Hugo and Nebula award winning author Orson Scott Card. In The Ships of Earth, the artificial intelligence guardian of the planet Harmony that is the Oversoul is gradually failing, and due to its decline, Harmony's human colonists are degenerating into a state of endless war and conquest. The remnants of the Oversoul has called a group of sixteen refugees from the fallen city of Basilica to an abandoned spaceport, and now Wetchik, Nafai, and their family must cross desert wastes, guided by the Oversoul, to prepare the hidden interstellar ships to fly again. But not all present have opted for exile, and their resentment could potentially sabotage the mission. An enthralling saga of destiny, highly recommended. 10 CDs, approximately 13 hours.

Overall I enjoyed this series. Card has created an interesting potential future and draws it out in detail. Often too much detail. The first novel in the series was plagued with an over abundance of trivial data that did not ultimately reflect on the story. The plot drowned in atmosphere and character development. In fact the first two novels in the series felt like one larger book that had been broken in two. The story would have been more cohesive as a single novel.
In ships of Earth the characters of the adults have been developed and some attention is paid to the children. Overall however, more time seems to be spent on advancing the plot than in the previous to volumes. If not that, then perhaps the plot was merely more interesting in this novel. This book was probably my favorite of the five in the series.
Many people complain or admire Card's use of religeous symbolism. I myself have not read the book of Mormon so I could not attest to those claims. If he steeped this story in theology he did it in such a way to make it palatable to a larger market. The only real argument I could see for this story having a theological orientation is its poor science. Card seems to have little understanding of some of the biological sciences especially genetics. Such a small group of individuals does not represent a viable gene pool to colonize a planet. Thoughts of the results of all of that inbreeding makes me shudder. It also seems highly unlikely that Humans could be on Harmony for forty million years without experiencing any changes. Perhaps the oversoul was providing a genetic bottleneck to prevent evolution.
If you like the first two novels by all means read this one. If you did not, then let this book pass by. I would recommend the series to any person who has not read it as any ideas that feel new in science fiction are a rarity.

The Ships of Earth is third in the Homecoming Series. I found the first in the series a brilliant book, the second was imaginative and interesting and this one alternates between brilliant and appalling. It's brilliant as it shows the struggles of 16 members of two families (really one) who have fled the decadent, fascinating city of Basilica to survive and flourish in the desert. They are guided by a vision from the Oversoul, the computer, that they are to find the lost ships of earth, repair them and return to earth in them. It's a breathtakingly vast concept. This could have, should have been a classic. Instead, there is much that is appalling about the book. There is an almost unbelievably ugly self-righteousness that creeps in (actually it leaps in), an attitude of "I'm right. You're wrong. Do as I say or I'll kill you." The threats of murder loom over the book and are never dealt with. Basically, Card divides his 16 people into two groups, one good and one evil. The good people keep the book interesting as they grow in depth and character, as people who don't think they have anything in common become friends and/or fall in love. However, the bad people become awful, in a very boring, repetitious way. There is hatred based on jealousy between brothers -- hatred that leads to murderous plots. There is hatred based on jealousy between two sisters. There a sameness to this hatred that gets very tiresome as it doesn't go anywhere. Worst of all (and a major cause of the hatred) is the selfrighteousness of the leader. He's the distant father-figure, fascinating in the first two books as he becomes a prophet leading his family on his mission to return to earth, appalling here as he literally forces his family to follow him with threats of death. The obvious move would be to reach a decision point, draw a line in the sand and tell people to join willingly or leave. Instead, people who don't want to be there are judged worthless and contemptible with an ugly self-righteousness, but they're not allowed to leave. The book becomes a fascinating study in the birth of religious fanaticism, only it's unintentional. It's a shame. The book would have been much better had everyone had to make an honest choice; had new people been added to the group as old ones drop out; had the struggle between whether the group would be matriarchal or patriarchal been more fully explored, etc. The list of flaws is very long, but so is the list of virtues. I think it proves that Card, even when he's on what seems to be the wrong track, is still an amazingly great writer.

I remember reading this series about 10 years ago, and for high school, it was a good read, but nothing outstanding. Now I find that there is absolutely no follow through, these books are just a thinly disguised re-write of parts of the book of Mormon. For those of us that wanted good SF not a religious treatise, it's downright disappointing. Now I know why Card never resolved the issues concerning the characters. It's because they were just the 'hook' to get us all interested in the Mormon theology.
I review the whole series here, some spoilers.
The first three books are just good enough, that when you get to this and the fifth book, you find yourself very annoyed that the characters become flat and lifeless, just caricatures, really.
Nafai and Elemak never really resolve their differences, or even have a 'final' showdown. The last book carries the reader far into the future and all references to those other characters, like Luet, Hushidh and Issib to name a few, are dropped, never to reappear again.
The series really started going downhill once the Rats and the Bats were introduced. I mean, how lame is this? After 40 million years, the only species to evolve are rats and bats. Not dolphins or the cockroach or - birds even? This is an insult to the reader's intelligence. This becomes the star of the show, with the characters stories taking a back seat and finally disappearing altogether. I read the last few pages of the fourth book hoping to find out what happened after Elemak woke up to find the Nafari gone and his wife with them. After all his cruelties, he never really gets what's coming to him. Nafai turns into exactly what Elemak hates, rather than becoming a full fledged personality of his own. The Prophet Nafai, hm. Ugh.
You find yourself scanning the few moments featuring Shedemei in the fifth novel, to see if she ever even mentions any of them. She doesn't. You have no idea how they died, what happened to the next generation, nothing. Why spend so much time building these characters if they were nothing more than a cheap ploy to get us to read a watered down version of the book of Mormon? I feel cheated and disgusted.
I guess Card did this series as opposed to walking around door to door sweating his 'hooy' off trying to sell his religion. This was done in air conditioned comfort I assume, and he fulfills whatever obligation. I just know I will not be picking up any of this author's works without serious thought beforehand.

I read the first two books in a couple of days and enjoyed them. I moved on to book three and found it to be one of the most frustrating reads of my life.

This book is full of errors, contradictions, and repetitions. It appears that the author and the editor didn't bother to re-read the first two books to check for consistency. And it really shows.

Most of the character conflict has already been played out in the first two books or it is contrieved around information that contradicts information provided in the first two books. The characters are supposed to be several years older by the end of this book but they don't appear to have grown at all.

My suggestion, skip this book. You won't be missing anything.