Rating: 
Summary: One of Card's Best
Review: Orson Scott Card is one of the most intruiging writers working in science fiction today. He has somehow fused his experiences as a devout Mormon and a devout sci-fi nerd to come up with a unique voice. At his best, his stories are lyrically written, exciting adventures in which good people confront real moral dilemmas, then (usually) solve them. At his worst, his stories are endless sequels where the same plotline repeats endlessly and his male characters spend pages talking about their shallow moral analysis while female characters use their talents and skills basically to prop up the men in their lives.
_Earthborn_ is one of the best. To really feel the weight of this book, you need to have read the previous four in the series. In those books, two brothers (Nafai and Elemak) and their other relatives go on an Odessey from their planet, where peace is artificially imposed on its residents, to Earth, in an effort to help their planet's overseer figure out how to repair itself. Elemak rejects the "god" of their planet, and spends the next several hundred years rebelling. Nafai accepts him, and spends the books attempting to redeem his prodigal brother.
_Earthborn_ cracks the whip of moral tension that the last four books have been coiling. It takes place generations after the previous book, when all the characters of the first four have become myths to the various peoples of Earth. Of course, the moral conflict recurs, and a new set of characters have to decide whether to listen to the god of their world or rebel.
None of this can do the book justice. Although it embodies many of Card's weeknesses, including long moral discussions between the characters, one-dimensional female characters, and an abrupt ending, it still brings their world, both physical and moral, to life in a beautiful way.
Rating: 
Summary: Liked the Homecoming Series? You Don't Need This...
Review: Personally, I don't feel this novel adds to the Homecoming series as a whole. The only character carried over from the original "cast" is Shedemei, and the other characters are too numerous and distant to give you any real connection to them. The same with the events... I just really had trouble caring because I was thrust into them without bothering to fully grasp where I was in this setting.
I think that if you've read the rest of the Homecoming series and are considering whether or not to read this in addition, I wouldn't bother. I know it's tempting to find out what else happens, but it really isn't all that amazing, and doesn't actually contribute to the plot behind it.
As for the religious overtones, I actually found myself bored with portions of the novel. I even went as far as to skip reading a few areas, which I hardly EVER do with novels.
My advice: Don't bother with this one.
Rating:
Summary: Card seemed to have written himself into a corner
Review: This book seems somehow disconnected from the first 4 in the series. Whereas they were solid science fiction novels that drew you in and made you want to know what happens next, "Earthborn" seems more like religious fiction in which Card has his characters engage in long, very un-compelling theological discussions. The villians in this story are atheists. But they're atheists like one never finds outside of the minds of the religiously devout: thoroughly evil (their atheism is manifested by child-beating and cartoonish misogyny), unbelievably arrogant, and with their un-belief based on the most convoluted logic ever. It's a topic to be discussed elsewhere but I'll say it anyway: atheists are not as different from the devout as the devout love to think they are. It feels as though Card started writing this series without quite thinking through how he was going to end it and, when he sat down to finish the series, he panicked and thus had to end it on this very vague, unsatisfactory note. The whole point of the series is to find the Keeper of Earth--which in the first book is very clearly described as the computer that created the Oversoul. But by this 5th book, Card had apparently changed his mind and decided that the Keeper of Earth is God. But Card knows that you really can't put God into any sort of conventional story without obliterating the other characters and the story's conflict itself--so he has to sort of tiptoe around the edges of actually putting God into the story. And the result is, well, not a very good story.
Rating: 
Summary: A bad closure for the series.
Review: This is novel five of the Homecoming Series. And unfortunately, it is the worst one. While I was looking for a great conclusion following the fourth novel, what I received is a totally different thing. Perhaps the most important thing is that the characters Card worked so hard to create in the first four novels don't exist anymore, except for one. I was flabbergasted to see that these characters did not play a role in this novel. The second thing I did not care for was the fact that too much time has passed between the fourth and fifth novel. When the fourth book ended, there were many questions as to how life would change following the exodus by Nafai. But, we are left examining what occured hundreds of years following the exodus. One of the positives of this novel is that there is some great social problems found in this novel. There are examples of slavery, and male chauvenism. I believe that Card does his best to destroy these two topics and shows how society should live. This novel is not what I expected. It fails as a great concluding chapter in the homecoming series. If all else, avoid reading this novel, because it might destroy the image that you have created in the first four novels.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book but disappointing: missed the old characters
Review: This is really a great book as far as the storyline goes, but I was hoping to get more of the old characters. While they were talked about as legends and heroes, I really wanted to see what actually happened to them. Specifically, I was expecting to learn about the war between Nafari and the Elemaki. I can't really complain too much though because I really did enjoy this book, including the new characters.
Rating:
Summary: Good book but disappointing: missed the old characters
Review: This is really a great book as far as the storyline goes, but I was hoping to get more of the old characters. While they were talked about as legends and heroes, I really wanted to see what actually happened to them. Specifically, I was expecting to learn about the war between Nafari and the Elemaki. I can't really complain too much though because I really did enjoy this book, including the new characters.
Rating:
Summary: Do you even know what the storyline was about?
Review: This was a wonderful book. The only reason I give it a 4 star rating is that this is supposedly the last one. For those of you out there who criticize this book because it was not entertaining enough you missed the whole point of the authors writing this book. This series was not about Nafai, Elemak, or any of the characters that make it so rich it is about the Keeper of the Earth. I applaud Mr. Card for his "truthsense."
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Reading
Review: Throughout this series Card has been playing with Biblical themes and characters on another planet 40 million years in the future, and then on Earth in the same time period. He now follows the Biblical track of jumping from 400 years before Christ to the time of the New Testament. There was the creation of sacred texts by the patriarchs (Nafai) that are now followed, to certain extents by the people of Earth. But just as in 1st century Palestine, many have grown legalistic in their pursuit of their religion, and are in need of revival. On the way he successfully limits the validity of the Mormon Native American myth, by comparing those tribes to an Islamic violent failed evolutionary stream that is only peripherally related to the main storyline.
In the meantime, in the downside of the series, only Shedemai remains from the original cast of the first four books. I miss the characters that Card drew so well, and wanted to know what happened to them- it felt like conflicts were still unresolved. But then, that is the way of the Bible too, where the point isn't the characters, the people, but the shadowy character behind the people, God. Shedemai's presence provides some measure of continuity, and also provides a nice setup for a Christ-figure to show up, as people begin to preach the religion of Love.
So here, we have a man who baptizes, speaking of another coming after him, and of the need for people to renew themselves in love, and return to the true religion of the Keeper, ala John the Baptist. We have the growth of the movement, and the resulting persecution. And one, close to the religion, breathing murderous threats, and then he is met on the road to Damascus.
None of this of course fits with the stories we find in the Gospels and Acts. Rather, Card seems to be taking the stories and themes of the New Testament and playing freely with them, to create new stories, using the same ideas in new ways. Though at times Shedemai is a Christ figure, with great power, coming from something like God Himself, with a huge ethic of service within love, and love of all peoples and species- she also does not know herself, and does not know the Keeper. But do not look here for anyone truly representing Jesus or God. This is in many ways poorly done allegory, as if Card is trying to represent Biblical themes and characters and yet can never adequately achieve true symbology. This is certainly a work of fiction, and shows how truly fictional similar heretical attempts to recreate the Biblical storyline have been.
Through this Card shows what might have been the psychology of some of the heroes and anti-heroes of the Bible. The Old and New Testament sometimes don't lend themselves to the degree of psychological introspection we desire and have come to expect in modern novels. Here is one possibility for that introspection. And finally, what we have been waiting for for five books, what was hinted at all along, Shedemai gets to see who the Keeper of Earth truly is.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Reading
Review: Throughout this series Card has been playing with Biblical themes and characters on another planet 40 million years in the future, and then on Earth in the same time period. He now follows the Biblical track of jumping from 400 years before Christ to the time of the New Testament. There was the creation of sacred texts by the patriarchs (Nafai) that are now followed, to certain extents by the people of Earth. But just as in 1st century Palestine, many have grown legalistic in their pursuit of their religion, and are in need of revival. On the way he successfully limits the validity of the Mormon Native American myth, by comparing those tribes to an Islamic violent failed evolutionary stream that is only peripherally related to the main storyline. In the meantime, in the downside of the series, only Shedemai remains from the original cast of the first four books. I miss the characters that Card drew so well, and wanted to know what happened to them- it felt like conflicts were still unresolved. But then, that is the way of the Bible too, where the point isn't the characters, the people, but the shadowy character behind the people, God. Shedemai's presence provides some measure of continuity, and also provides a nice setup for a Christ-figure to show up, as people begin to preach the religion of Love. So here, we have a man who baptizes, speaking of another coming after him, and of the need for people to renew themselves in love, and return to the true religion of the Keeper, ala John the Baptist. We have the growth of the movement, and the resulting persecution. And one, close to the religion, breathing murderous threats, and then he is met on the road to Damascus. None of this of course fits with the stories we find in the Gospels and Acts. Rather, Card seems to be taking the stories and themes of the New Testament and playing freely with them, to create new stories, using the same ideas in new ways. Though at times Shedemai is a Christ figure, with great power, coming from something like God Himself, with a huge ethic of service within love, and love of all peoples and species- she also does not know herself, and does not know the Keeper. But do not look here for anyone truly representing Jesus or God. This is in many ways poorly done allegory, as if Card is trying to represent Biblical themes and characters and yet can never adequately achieve true symbology. This is certainly work of fiction, and shows how truly fictional similar heretical attempts to recreate the Biblical storyline have been. Through this Card shows what might have been the psychology of some of the heroes and anti-heroes of the Bible. The Old and New Testament sometimes don't lend themselves to the degree of psychological introspection we desire and have come to expect in modern novels. Here is one possibility for that introspection. And finally, what we have been waiting for for five books, what was hinted at all along, Shedemai gets to see who the Keeper of Earth truly is.
Rating:
Summary: Great read even though millions already knew the ending
Review: To the majority of the world's sci-fi readership, Earthborn's plot is as unguessable from page to page as the next book. To one coming from Card's own religion, the plot and its eventual end are known, or at least guessed at, from the early chapters of Memory of Earth. The plot comes from well known stories in the Book of Mormon, the Mormon Church's companion volume of scripture to the Bible. Card's great strength as a writer is in exploring the human condition in all its aspects. He uses the unlimited creative potential of Sci-fi as a writing device to construct whatever universe best allows him to examine his subjects. In this series Card uses Sci-fi to distance the Book of Mormon stories just enough from their scriptural context that it can appeal to all readership, but keeps the real major events intact as they are in the scripture. I believe his journey in writing these books is a personal one of coming closer to his heroes in the Book of Mormon and exploring the reasons behind some of the actions of people in that book. You want to understand and get more out of this series? I suggest a reading of The Book of Mormon as well.
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