Book Review - Pathfinder

Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oh, I really really LOVED this book.

This shouldn't be a surprise. Ender's Game, also by Orson Scott Card, is one of my top novels I've ever read (I tend to recommend it to everyone, including random strangers I meet who seem like they might possibly be readers. You never know.) It did surprise me, though, probably because of the fantasy element.

So here, let me come clean: Generally speaking I really *really* don't like fantasy novels. My husband, on the other hand, loves them. He often reads a really good one and then tries to get me into it, and I just fail at reading fantasy. I get bored. I don't like it. Unless it's the Lord of the Rings trilogy or something very similar, I couldn't be less interested.

So, when I learned that this was a sci fi and fantasy hybrid, I was nervous. I really like sci fi, particularly dystopian fiction, and that appealed to me, but swords and dragons and that sort of fantasy? Uh oh. I was worried.

I shouldn't have been.

I fell in love with Rigg from the very first chapter, and couldn't have put it down if I'd tried. I also adored Loaf and Leaky, two lesser-seen characters that I couldn't stop telling my husband stories about. In fact, I went on and on so much about the book that now he's reading it too, partly just so my references start to make sense.

Much of this book is about time travel and paradoxes, which I found particularly interesting since Card comes at the subject matter from a very different perspective than most writers who take on the subject. Instead of shying away from anything that could cause a paradox, he embraces it and strides right through the ideas that are typically dismissed as impossible, making it all seem perfectly reasonable and making you wonder what drugs the other writers were on because clearly only Card has it right.

This is a fun novel, a can't-put-it-down novel and a terrific book to devour when you are stressed and need to escape for a little while. I can't wait for the second book in this series - it is on my shelf as we speak and will be broken into very shortly!

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