I gave this 4 stars. witch is vary good.
and Stefan Rudnicki is a good Narrater.
Orson Scott Card is one of the top 2 writers I like.
I think most would like this story.
read the reviews and try the simple that helps.
a sci-fi and magic story mix.
I leave the story review to others.
if you do like the first book then get them all.
enjoy!

This is a good enough story. I am someone who read "Enders' Game" when it was first published and so keep trying with Orson Scott Card. But I'm afraid he is one of those people whose first book was his best.

Having said that, this is a decent story and it may be worth reading more of the series to see where he goes with it. It is a slight twist on other speculation about the effects of time travel plus it brings in some Asimov-like questions about the ethics of "robots" and the like. Beyond that, it is basic fantasy stuff - orphan kids, magical powers, mixed group of friends allied against the world.....

Top 10%

Other Orson Scott Card books.

Didn't like how the readers made Loaf's voice sound evil. I read the book a couple years ago, and my interpretation was that his voice shouldn't have an evil, snide streak to it.

Yes

If you enjoy science fiction with time travel, you will LOVE this book.

Great Idea, great delivery. I liked how there were different narrators for each of the characters viewpoints. There were 3 or 4 character viewpoints and each had a good narrator. I usually don't get into time travel stories as much, but this book has a very intriguing take on it. I also liked how it was clean, so I can recommend it to any friends and family who like this genre without having to worry about bad language, sexual content, or too much gory violence. There's also enough detail overall to visualize the story, but not so much that it slows down the plot.

It is a fantasy book, and I have no problem with suspension of believe, but I found this one hard to chew because of inconsistencies. OSC spends a huge amount of time justifying how the powers are to work, which detracts from the real story. Given what they can do and the overall plot do not mesh well. If they were trying just to escape death, they could have done so at any time; just go back a generation and live happily. I had a hard time with Loaf's motivation; he left his wife after all. The bad guys: Why do the protagonists need to die exactly? What plan could they not enact without their deaths? These just scrape the top layer of problems I had with the book. I will not be picking up the sequel(s).

The story is as always well written. I liked the unique ideas presented in this story. My fingers are crossed if the series will finish as well as it started.

This is the best kind of classic fantasy. I've yet to move to Book 2, but Book 1 was entertaining, intricate (but not so complicated as to be incomprehensible), and surprising. Fantasy readers who expect magic won't be disappointed. But the magic is far from your typical fare, so the reader/listener will be intrigued practically from the beginning.There were some confusing aspects of the story, but interestingly, they were issues that Card had the characters themselves debate, making them far less confusing in the end.

I have to admit I wasn't fond of the performance. It featured multiple voices, and a couple of them were downright unpleasant. All in all, I think I would put it this way: I have grown quite accustomed to audiobooks, and am not bored by a single narrative voice. As long as it's read well, the lack of distraction enables me to paint my own mental picture based on the author's words. I find the attempt at dramatizing the work further than a single narrative voice quite jarring; it interferes with the picture(s) I'm painting in my head.Despite giving it an average performance review, I still gave this book the top 'overall' review because the story itself is deserving of more stars than were available to me.

I would have loved to have listened to it in one sitting. As it was, I found myself listening to it at times other than my normal listening times, and gladly gave up other entertainments on occasion because this book was better than anything I'd have seen on TV or read on the internet.

I am usually impressed with Book 1 in any Orson Scott Card series, but this book is the best he's written since Ender's Game. I am going to start Book 2 with some trepidation, however, because his series end up being a bit bizarre and idiosyncratic. What Card excels at is writing about the origins of worlds and what - beyond the ken of their inhabitants - makes those worlds tick. Once that has been fully explained, his stories can get a bit overwrought, to put it politely.

I have enjoyed Mr Card's books in the past but found this one heavy going, with long involved explanations and unappealing characters. It started off well enough but then seemed to lose its way. It needed to be sharper and punchier with a quicker moving story line for me.

I also found the changes in narrator distracting, not sure what this added but I did not like it. I won't be buying any more books in what is obviously the start of a new series.

Yes....couldn't stop listening....fasinating story.

'Rig, and his father.

This reader doesn't try to do female voices, or even change his voice a lot....but wonderful sound to his voice for this kind of story.

Definitely, but one has to make a living!

Highly recommend this book!

Clearly narrated, never boring, I listen to audio books while running and found I that each time I listened I would run a couple of extra kms, so I could hear more of the story!.