Visitors

Pathfinder Series, Book 3

By: Orson Scott Card

Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne, Emily Rankin, Stefan Rudnicki

Length: 16 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's Summary

From the internationally bestselling author of Ender’s Game comes the riveting finale to the story of Rigg, a teenager who possesses a secret talent that allows him to see the paths of people’s pasts.

In Pathfinder, Rigg joined forces with another teen with special talents on a quest to find Rigg’s sister and discover the true depth and significance of their powers. Then Rigg’s story continued in Ruins as he was tasked to decipher the paths of the past before the arrival of a destructive force with deadly intentions. Now, in Visitors, Rigg’s journey comes to an epic and explosive conclusion as everything that has been building up finally comes to pass, and Rigg is forced to put his powers to the test in order to save his world and end the war once and for all.

©2014 Orson Scott Card (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Published by arrangement with the Barbara Bova Literary Agency.

I really wanted to love this book

Any additional comments?

I loved the first book, liked the second and endured the last to get to the end of the story. It was overly complicated which muddled the story. And sometimes the characters were just stupid. I ended up with a "what really happened here" with all the back and forth. Then the whole idea than complex biological creatures can add vast amounts of complexity with only the passage of time is ridiculous and so the required suspension of disbelief is exhausting. Add to that the "humanity needed us" and .. big sigh. Hopefully the last Mithermages will be better.

Satisfying Conclusion to the Acclaimed Series

I was attending Orson Scott Card's Writing Workshop this year when I heard him mentioning how difficult it was for him to wrap up writing this book. He knew he had a real gem on his hands; this is easily his most ambitious series since Ender's Game. Seems that he truly thought this was one of his best, but he had only one, BIG problem: he had no idea how to end the story.

I was a bit shocked to hear this. The Pathfinder series is easily my favorite of his since the original Ender's Game. Yet as creative as this project was - and he had written a killer beginning and a good middle - he had been working on the project without actually knowing how it was all going to turn out. This process is typically known as free-writing, or letting the story tell itself as you write and lose yourself within it. However, the style has its drawbacks, one of which is that endings can be kind of weak and unsatisfying.

Then, at the workshop, Scott said that he had recently had an epiphany of sorts and that he finally knew how to end it up. He then proceeded to finish this novel while his students were working on the rough drafts of their assignment stories. This greatly relieved me, who had been waiting for this novel with much anticipation for the last couple of years.

Ultimately, this novel pulls off the ending that it promised. But boy, does it go in a lot of unexpected directions on the way there! At times, I felt like I could see where Card had struggled. The story itself meanders in places, seeming to get lost within itself. It goes off on tangents and I can't seem to figure out WHY Card even wrote those parts, or left them in the final novel.

But though there are frustrations at times, but in the end I feel it deserves 4 stars. Let me tell you that this book crams a LOT into its pages. This story goes way, way far away from its humble fantasy novel roots that were begun in "Pathfinder". There are tons of philosophical examples and conversations that are typical Card. There were a couple of story arcs that weren't that interesting to me. But I have to commend Card for being able to pull this one off. I really enjoyed the characters, most of which felt so alive to me that I know I'll remember them for a long time. It's actually kind of sad to see this series end. I could see it continuing on much further from here.

I would definitely recommend this series to any Card fans, even if you've just read Ender's Game. This remains my favorite series of his right beside the title that gave him his fame.

Lots of Fun

It was a lot of fun picturing the time shifters doing different tasks in different areas during the same time period. The identity of the destroyers pleasantly caught me by surprise.

Spoiler - One missed opportunity when Rig and his sister copied themselves and then jumped ahead in time to kill themselves off. I can understand that they might not want to risk jumping back in time to live and changing something, but they could have chose to held out until the world was saved and then jumped ahead to live in the future.

A fabulous mix of fantasy and science fiction!

I would recommend this book as well as this entire series to anyone who has a taste for science fiction, even those who are fans of hard core Sci Fy, due to the amount and degree of physics and causation theory used in the series, but I would also recommend it to those who like fantasy with people developing new powers, or those who like space stories,...basically it has something for everyone which is very hard to pull off but Card has managed seamlessly. With well rounded characters and intriguing situations it's a great way to spend some time!

Plot moves quickly- intriguing story

Well developed characters. It requires some mind gymnastics to keep track of the characters and time lines. The plot moves quickly. This is book 3. Read Pathfinder first and then book 2.

wow

this books left me confused and cussing half the characters in it, wanting them to disappear.with the extent that things are discribed and all possible different ways to do something, I grew so deeply bored that I started playing it in the evenings so I would fall asleep and get a good nights rest.I will say this story line was such a good idea and could have been one of my favorites but fell , no, was pushed to worthless.I only bought this book to complete the series and am sorry to have spent a cent on any of it.

slow

I didn't like how slow this book was. this is the 3rd book in the series but he explains everything like you never met these characters. plus he repeats conversations . over and over and over again. I found myself listening to the end just so I knew how he completed it. but it was a chore

Huge disappointment, did not finish it

What disappointed you about Visitors?

I loved the first two books in this series and have listened to most of his books but there was way too much endless dialogue about the time paradox and not enough events. The device of replicating characters was just too much. He obviously had a hard time ending this series coherently and dragged his readers around in circles while he tried things out.

Has Visitors turned you off from other books in this genre?

Not really...it was the exception although I thought Sanderson's efforts without the Jordan prequels were weak.

Which scene was your favorite?

No favorites but the Leaky character had NO redeeming qualities and should have been killed off...alas when I parted from this book, she was still droning on.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Visitors?

This entire book should have been redone. A editor would have been stymied short of tossing it and starting over. My guess is that OSC is an author who does what he wants without the services of an editor.

Any additional comments?

OSC has written some highly entertaining and creative books. This just was not one of them. Although it had some highly original ideas, they were poorly executed. I bailed about ⅔ through not caring any more about any of the characters...even lowly Umbo became tedious.

Underwhelmed

An unsatisfying conclusion to what started as a great series. I wish I would have skipped it

If you like OSC then it is worth your time.

There is something meaningful about the way OSC writes that has made me a fan for many years. This was another fine piece and a good conclusion to the series.

The performance was outstanding.

I would have given five stars but did not enjoy the parts of the book surrounding the war against Hatamander. It was a small piece comparatively, but it seemed unimportant.

A satisfying finish of the pathfinder trilogy

As always Orson Scott Card shows he can write good stories, especially when the protagonists are children - or perhaos rather youths. He also has a refreshing look at time travel, simular to the tv series Continuum.

If you are not into time travel stories, this series probably can be somewhat hard to follow, since the protagonists travel back and forth in time, meeting themselves, destroying some time lines and creating new ones.

My main criticism probably is the dialogue, though. The protagonists talk and talk and talk, philosofizing around time travel and other thing. At times this can be a little too much.

If you like Orson Scott Card, you probably will like this, even if I think my favourites still are the Alvin Maker series, the Ender Wiggin series and the series in Ender’s Shadow.

For time travel fans only.

This last part of the trilogy got a bit too complicated in the time travel department for my taste. The rest of the story I enjoyed.

Excellent listen

Excellent listen very well written and awesomely performed very hard to put down leaves you wanting more

disappointing

disappointing end to the series. I loved the first book and premise unfortunately I felt like this book meandered a bit and didn't really have a proper flow at all.

5 star performance 4 star story

I loved the first 2 books and was really looking forward to this one. For me the story was very good but not quite up to the standard of the first 2. There were some quite tenuous storyline paths which didn't seem to fully make sense, but it had a nice twist and was still an excellent read. Definitely recommended

No other way to end it, I guess

If you could sum up Visitors in three words, what would they be?

Good, science-fiction and finished

Who was your favorite character and why?

It is hard not to like Rig.

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances? How does this one compare?

I really like Stefan Rudnicki, to me he has become the voice of Orson Scott Card. The other two actors fit the roles they played too. Overall, this combination of actors brought more life to the story.

Bit of an anticlimax

Enjoying but a disappointing finish to the series... Could it be possible Mr Scott Card was it a bit of a rush to finish?

Great ending to an interesting and exciting series

Taking time travel and paradoxes to the headaching limit. Great book. Would have preferred one instead of three narrators. Any one of them would have done great alone.

Poor closure to the series.

A real rollercoaster, then just dies at the end. Disappointing, obviously ran out of time.