Folk of the Fringe

I have ready most of Orson Card's books and am a huge fan. This book is very captivating and is great with character development as well as awesome narration. The only down side is that it is a collection of short stories centered around a main theme and I found myself wishing a few of the stories were longer. This is no Ender's Game...but if you like Card then this is a must read!

I expected enjoyable post-apocalyptic sci-fi but got an indoctrination into the theology and world view of the Latter-day Saints. After a plague has decimated the population of North America, "Christian soldiers" (non-LDS) run amok, killing LDS men, women, and children. I guess initiates may enjoy it, but I didn't make it past the first section.

Classic Card. This is another set of short stories taking place in a possible future US. I can see how this would be more enjoyable to someone who is familiar with the LDS (Mormon) culture, but I don't think is is prerequisite. I found it entertaining, funny, and thought provoking as I do most of Cards works. I enjoyed the afterword almost as much as the stories themselves. Keep them coming.

I loved the Ender series and was buying everything Orson wrote. However, there are now several books, and this is one, that unless you are a Mormon you will find infantile. Avoid.

no, i don't usually

development of the main story line and how the seemingly random events were actually a timeline of development.

no, but it was enjoyable and thought provoking.

There was a time before the end of the Cold War when post-nuclear holocaust books were everywhere. How humanity and civilization moved on after the bomb was a big subject in fantasy writing. Muties and bands of pirate robbers and cannibals abounded through fiction. This book took that subject matter, which was once so popular, and twisted it to fit the point of view of the persecuted Mormon people. In the beginning of the book the Baptists of Greensboro massacred the Mormons of Greensboro and survivors were forced to move to Utah were law and order still presided. Interesting enough. It would be awfully offensive subject matter if you were a Baptists or an "Evangelical Christian". I wonder if the Greensboro Baptist did anything to the Greensboro Catholics or the Greensboro Jehovah's Witnesses. There are Christian Sects that exists that the Baptist find more offensive than the Mormons. Mr. Card didn't mention any of these. I do think that if there were six bombs dropped and civilization crumbled soon after there would be a lot more racial tension in the Southeast U.S. than the author believed to be the case. It's funny to me that the author thinks the Mormons would be persecuted 20 years ago, but just two years ago the Republicans almost had a Mormon candidate for President. Of course, it was the far right block of Christian Conservative Republicans who threw their weight behind McCain, but if McCain hadn't been there it could have very well been Romney who received the nomination. Obviously, the Mormons aren't as objectionable in the American mainstream as the author would like to believe. They're not exactly persecuted or outcast in America. To me they seem to be a wealthy, highly educated, well-mannered, if not slightly brainwashed group of people. But they are not objectionable as a religious group. I would at least place them above the Muslims as far as religious likability goes. But this subject explored in length in this book makes it interes

I didn't realize when I started listening, that this was a compilation of several short stories. I did enjoy the read, but it was sometimes difficult to keep up with the way it jumped from one to another. Not a bad book, just not one of my favorites, as I said.