Customer Reviews

Treasure Box

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Since I love Orson Scott Card's other work I probably am more critical of this than I would be from another writer. I found this book a mild disappointment, though it is still an engaging and fun read.

If you like his Alvin series, Ender, and so forth, this reads a bit more like, well, Stephen King. The characters are believable but the supernatural elements pushed the plausibility meter a little, and this from someone who loves his fantasy and science fiction oriented work and never had any trouble with his explanations in these books. I can't say much more about that without giving away the one big plot twist, but I found what happened with the character Madeline a little too convenient and not set up very well -- like a bad mystery where once you find out 'whodunit', you do recall a few previous clues, but still just don't buy it.

That may sound overly critical, but Card is one of my favorite writers so I hold him to a high standard. He can do (and does) much better. If you haven't read this one yet and are a fan of his other books, I would recommend one of his newer books, Enchantment, which is an amazing read.

You know you'll never go wrong with a Card book. They're all entertaining. The first 20-30 pages of this book are enchanting. I couldn't put it down. It was entertaining the rest of the way, but not at the same level.

The climax of the book is rushed, Card compresses it into 20 pages leaving the reader a little shell-shocked. Tension and mystery build..and then it's all over. Not a great book, but a decent read.

This was my first book by this author, and I was not disappointed, as I found it to be a very creative and inventive book with some genuinely spooky moments. It started off a little slowly but then quickly picked up momentum.

The book revolves around Quentin Fears, whose childhood was marred by the tragic death of his beloved sister. Though it left him emotionally crippled, it did not stop him from discovering a talent he had for making money. Independently wealthy, his life is a fairly reclusive one, until he meets the women of his dreams, the mysterious Madeleine, a woman about whom he knows little. After a brief courtship, he marries her. After all, for him it was love at first sight.

When he finally goes to her family homestead in upstate New York and meets her family, a motley and bizarre crew at best, he realizes that he may have bitten off more than he can chew. It seems that Madeleine has a secret, and had she shared it with Quentin when they had first met, he most certainly would not have married her. You see, Madeleine is not exactly as she seems.

This is a wonderfully inventive and genuinely spooky book that has some great moments. Towards the end, however, the story sort of gets away a bit from the author. Still, this is a very entertaining read and one that will make me look for this author again.

I'm not a woman and I'm not gay, so I just love (in a purely platonic way) Orson Scott Card's writing. This is a very good one. The main character is just plain interesting, and the book feels so heartfelt. The characters and events seem so real, but then... they're not. It's kinda disturbing, but also exhilerating. Kind of a horror/mystery novel, but also is a story about a man who seems so real in an unreal world. It is truly memorable, especially if you like character development.

Orson Scott Card is one of the most gifted authors currently working. For a great example of his style read the first part of this novel. Then put it down, because reading the rest of it will change your mind. The buildup in this book is phenomenal. The scenes that take place in a gothic mansion populated by ghosts rank with some of the best work he has ever done. Why then does he throw all of this away for the sake of a plot twist that delivers nothing? Once the antagonist becomes nothing more than a powerful child the book looses it's beauty. It has no suspense, no fear, no style. It becomes a potboiler more suited to a mass market hack then a gifted artist. His first major non science fiction novel, Lost Boys, is one of the best American novels of the last 20 years. I cannot read it without crying. That book was a great work. This is not. The best thing about this novel is that the memory of it will fade quickly, and therefore, do little damage to his legacy,

I like most of Card's work, but this book was a total failure of an attempt at the thriller/horror genre. I wanted to like the main character, a Silicon Valley guy like me, but just couldn't get into him or any of the other characters in the book. Card also shows terrible handling of the supernatural here; I don't know if it is his Mormonism interfering with writer's judgement (don't know much about Mormonism) but he takes a "ghost story" way beyond the conventions of a localized phenomenon and into solipsistic absurdity in which the witch antagonist manipulates all of reality with ludicrous Godlike powers over thousands of miles. I truly admire Card as a writer, but he should have left this book in the Box. The one in his basement that never gets opened, that is.

Sure, I was thrown for a loop by the abrupt twist in the story midway through. But Card's knack for thinking forward and arranging odd things that become clear later in the story shines through here, just as in his other novels. Not everything can be Ender's Game, but it can still be good, and Treasure Box certainly is.

I consider Stephen King, personally, to be the best modern writer of characters, but Card is no slouch, and even his supernatural beings come across real enough to have me glancing about my shadowy room while reading this at night. You can feel what Quentin feels. This may be Card's most atmospheric work (I haven't read all his novels) and there are some genuinely spooky scenes. No, it will never stand as his greatest achievement alongside Speaker for the Dead and Enchantment, etc., but it's still Card, and it's still great, and this is NOT a waste of time.

TREASURE BOX is a little of the old in a modern-day setting. There's a lot of talk about witches and beastly dragons, although the actual action is nothing so medieval-sounding.

At times I found myself feeling a little sheepish about the events in the novel, like, "I can't believe I'm falling for this!" because at times the story felt unbelievable. It was as if everything fell into place a little too conveniently without much of an explanation. The concepts explored are pretty interesting though, like the power some people have to call the dead back.

I still think Orson Scott Card a good writer.

I have read numberous OSC books and have found them enjoyable to varying degrees. I picked up Treasure Box to read on a long flight from Philedelphia to Salt Lake City hoping for something of the same quality as Lost Boys. Unfortunatley, I was disappointed with the results of my reading. The first few chapters were good and I was beginning to really get into the book but then things started to get weird. When I started to feel like I was reading a Steven King wannabee book I knew things were going bad. By the end of the story I was very disinterested (I was delayed on the ground and had nothing else to read) and really just wanted to hurry and finish. I think the problem was that I could never really get into the main character (as I did with Lost Boys) and his dilemma just wasn't presented as a believable phenomenon ( I know this is fiction, but there must be a thread of believability to hold attention). Overall, I find that OSC is very good at developing characters and situations where we can feel their pain but this was not the case. I was almost hoping that EVERYONE would stay in the house and disappear.

Orson Scott Card is one of my most favorite authors and, in the past, I have purchased his books without even reading the back cover because I felt assured that nothing he wrote would be dissappointing. No more. Treasure Box's paranormal slant seemed poorly developed and abruptly ended - as if he weren't quite sure how to flesh-out the rest of the story. The characters also seemed to lack the depth that I have come to expect from Card's stories. In my summary above, I stated that TREASURE BOX was almost as bad as LOST BOYS, and I still feel that LB was worse (i.e., too many sub-plots, abrupt ending). However, I empathized with the core family and their daily struggles. I cannot say the same for anyone in TREASURE BOX. :-(