Rating: Summary: fascinating! Review: I have never read a book by this author before (at least, that I can recollect) and so didn't know what to expect. I was pleasantly rewarded. The book starts out with ten year old Quentin Fears fighting for the life of his sister who the doctors say is brain-dead as a result of an accident. When he finally accepts the truth and allows the doctors and his parents to pull the plug so that others may be able to use some of her organs before it is too late for them to be of help to the recipients, he doesn't tell anyone of his conversation with his sister just prior to his decision. The impact of losing his sister turns him into a recluse of sorts who excells intellectually but has little interaction with the opposite sex as he is growing up because no one could match the image or qualifications of his dear lost sister. He ends up a very rich man at a relatively young age and about the time he finally realizes what he has been missing in not having a regular kind of relationship with a woman and decides to go looking for a mate, he just happens to run into the woman of his dreams, Madeleine. She is everything he has ever dreamed of in a woman, and surprise, she reminds him of deceased sister, Lizzy. They marry. They have been married for quite a while, and yet he hasn't met her family. When she finally agrees to take him to visit them, with warnings that they are a little different, he finds she wasn't kidding. The chauffeur delivers them to a three story house that was built in the eighteen hundreds. It is there that he begins to notice a change in Madeleine's personality. The family is indeed strange, and then Madeleine confronts her grandmother, and demands, that since she is now married that she is entitled to the inheritance she was promised, the contents in the treasure box. When Madeleine asks Quentin to open the box, he hesitates, because of her strange behavior. This makes her go into a fit of rage and run out of the house. When Quentin follows to console her, he finds she has disappeared. There are no footprints in the snow of hers where they should be and when he returns to the house, he finds, instead of the well kept and beautiful house he just left shortly before, a house with the furniture covered and layers of dust and no sign that anyone else had been there but himself. Madeleine has disappeared and he can't find a record of her existence anywhere. He has the mystery of her disappearance, and in finding out what is in the treasure box and why it was so important to her, to solve. I don't want to spoil the book for you by telling you too much, but rather urge you to read it yourself. When I first started the book I thought it was just a regular type mystery but as I got into it, it veered off in a whole new direction, keeping my imagination purring until the end.
Rating: Summary: fascinating! Review: I have never read a book by this author before (at least, that I can recollect) and so didn't know what to expect. I was pleasantly rewarded. The book starts out with ten year old Quentin Fears fighting for the life of his sister who the doctors say is brain-dead as a result of an accident. When he finally accepts the truth and allows the doctors and his parents to pull the plug so that others may be able to use some of her organs before it is too late for them to be of help to the recipients, he doesn't tell anyone of his conversation with his sister just prior to his decision. The impact of losing his sister turns him into a recluse of sorts who excells intellectually but has little interaction with the opposite sex as he is growing up because no one could match the image or qualifications of his dear lost sister. He ends up a very rich man at a relatively young age and about the time he finally realizes what he has been missing in not having a regular kind of relationship with a woman and decides to go looking for a mate, he just happens to run into the woman of his dreams, Madeleine. She is everything he has ever dreamed of in a woman, and surprise, she reminds him of deceased sister, Lizzy. They marry. They have been married for quite a while, and yet he hasn't met her family. When she finally agrees to take him to visit them, with warnings that they are a little different, he finds she wasn't kidding. The chauffeur delivers them to a three story house that was built in the eighteen hundreds. It is there that he begins to notice a change in Madeleine's personality. The family is indeed strange, and then Madeleine confronts her grandmother, and demands, that since she is now married that she is entitled to the inheritance she was promised, the contents in the treasure box. When Madeleine asks Quentin to open the box, he hesitates, because of her strange behavior. This makes her go into a fit of rage and run out of the house. When Quentin follows to console her, he finds she has disappeared. There are no footprints in the snow of hers where they should be and when he returns to the house, he finds, instead of the well kept and beautiful house he just left shortly before, a house with the furniture covered and layers of dust and no sign that anyone else had been there but himself. Madeleine has disappeared and he can't find a record of her existence anywhere. He has the mystery of her disappearance, and in finding out what is in the treasure box and why it was so important to her, to solve. I don't want to spoil the book for you by telling you too much, but rather urge you to read it yourself. When I first started the book I thought it was just a regular type mystery but as I got into it, it veered off in a whole new direction, keeping my imagination purring until the end.
Rating: Summary: Poor writing Review: I have read 21 Orson Scott Card books, so I can safely say that I am a big fan. This book lacks a lot of the elements that his other books have. For example, in most of his books the characters have many ethical dilemmas they must overcome. This book has very little of that, and we can only see it in the main character. Another flaw is the dialogue, which sounds forced. many of the little jokes characters make are not really funny or interesting. Other complaints: - the fist quarter of the book could have been condenced into two or three pages. - all of the characters are one dimensional. I cared about none of them. - the progression of the plot was messy and difficult to follow, which makes the twists seem less potent. If you want to read a good OSC book, try Lovelock or books from any of his series.
Rating: Summary: Not up to par with other OSC books Review: 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.
Rating: Summary: Great Story From a Versitile Writer! Review: I have read other great books by Card (Ender's Game, Pastwatch, The Homecoming Series) and each one seems to have been written by a different writer! Card has an amazing talent for changing his style for each novel. This book hooks you from the very first page and keeps you rooting for the hero throughout.
Quentin Fears (pronounced "fierce") loses Lizzy, his sister as a teenager. Lizzy was the only person that Quentin could relate to. He finds himself stumbling through a very successful, yet unfulfilling life and career because he measures every one against Lizzy and they just don't measure up.
One day when Quentin is about 34, he sees a woman ahead of him in a supermarket checkout who looks remarkably like Lizzy and has Lizzy's mannerisms. He tries to follow her out of the supermarket but loses her in the parking lot. He then drives around blindly thinking about her and somehow ends up in the parking lot for an apartment complex. He looks up and sees the Lizzy look-alike entering one of the apartments. He decides to investigate who lives there and finds that it is impossible because it is a vacant apartment.
The weird chance encounter spurs Quentin to change his life. He decides that he will go to some of the parties that he has avoided and try to see if he can meet a woman and have a relationship (Quentin is totally innocent in the ways of women and never had a girlfriend in his life). Quentin is bored by most of the women he meets at the parties, feeling they are too fake and after something.
He strikes up a conversation with the hostess at one of the parties, a matronly and very wise woman of "society." The hostess seems to have figured out the type of person Quentin is and tells him there is a woman like himself waiting to meet him outside by an oak tree. On a whim, Quentin decides to take a chance and meet her. The woman (Madeline) at first reminds him of Lizzy and then seems to display every single trait that Quentin could ever hope for in an "ideal" woman. Quentin is enraptured with her and immediately starts wanting to see her constantly. Some things are very mysterious about Madeline. She doesn't give any information about herself, claiming she moves about living with friends, doesn't have a phone number other than her cell and gives no information about her home life or any information regarding any family.
This seems not to bother Quentin and he rushes into a swift marriage with her. He thinks that little by little he will get her to give him information about herself. Though she is extremely passionate and shares the same ideals as Quentin she remains just as mysterious as ever. Little does Quentin know that when he does learn something about Madeline he may be sorry for what he wished for because Madeline is everything he doesn't want. For Madeline's purpose is to get Quentin to open a mysterious "treasure box" that does not contain what it implies!
Rating: Summary: It's Scott Card... what more can you say? Review: I have to agree with some of the other reviews in saying that this is, perhaps, not Card's strongest work. But even his worst effort is worth 5+ stars... on a scale of 1-5, I'd say Ender's Game deserves something like an 8! Still this is a fine novel, and very enjoyable to read. I highly recommend it!
Rating: Summary: Near-solipsistic failure of a novel. Review: 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.
Rating: Summary: Will the *real* OSC please start writing again? Review: I miss being completely drawn in and absorbed by OSC's novels. Ender's Game was fascinating, and Lost Boys brings me to tears every time I read it. This one started out interesting, but had completely lost steam by the middle. Predictable in spots, dull and unbelievable in others.
Rating: Summary: Could not put it down Review: I picked up this book at midnight one summer night and didn't put it down until I was finished. It was incredibly gripping, like all of Card's other books. I haven't read a book of Card's that I didn't appreciate and this book is not an exception. Contrary to other opinions here, I would have to say that his horror mystery was extremely exciting. I don't know what they're used to but I'm an avid reader and Card holds my #1 author spot.
Rating: Summary: i loved it Review: I really enjoyed the book. I haven't read many other OSC books but this was as good as any other of his books that i have read. The characters pulled me in the story and i could not put the book down.
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