So, at long last, I decided to crank up my Drum and Bass channel on Pandora and finally get this review finished. Rigg is a pretty ordinary kid from the outside. In fact, he's of the lowest social standing there is, a "privick" from far upriver who makes his living with his father hunting and selling furs. But Rigg has one ability that makes him extrodinary: he can see the paths. The paths of all who have ever been, all the animals, the people, the insects, he can see their paths through space and time, reaching back thousands of years. He's been able to prevent the death of himself and his father on a few occasions, but beyond that, Rigg doesn't see much purpose for his "gift".
Then that changes. Suddenly things begin to spiral faster than Rigg thought possible, and he realizes that his gift may not be entirely useless after all. In fact, with the help of a few friends, it may even have the ablity to change the world...both in the present, and in the past.
Review:
Many sci-fi lovers are already familiar with the name Orson Scott Card after his ingenius book Ender's Game, following the journey of a young boy destined to win an intergalatic war against an alien race. However, in Pathfinder, Card changes direction just a bit, moving away from the Sci Fi genre (while still including sci-fi themes) and more towards the Fantasy genre. Then he takes on a dangerous theme in terms of writing: time anomoly.
Card himself adknowledges in the authors note that he's decided to "embrace paradox." Gee, thanks a lot. True to his word, Card takes his time explaining every move the characters make when playing with the time space continuum, making this book feel, in a lot of ways, less like a novel and more like a science fiction textbook. His characters, playing the part of the teachers, debate back and forth every step on the way about what they are doing and what the consequences will be, and despite the fact that their conclusions make no sense whatsoever to them or the readers, they plunge head first into space-time (quite literally, you'll find) and do the impossible, not only travel back in time, but manipulate it. Card's genius explains how things often taken for granted in sci fi/fantasy can be explained by time anomalies. Invisibility? Just jump forward a few seconds. "Super speed"? Just accelerate your brain power to where you're faster and more alert than your compainions, then use that ability to go back in time. In this book Card becomes, in a way, a professor of Science Fiction. He's been around the block a few times, and now he's going to explain for us every step of the way why time can be an important part of science fiction that is rarely explained or understood.
Card is clearly a genuis, and definately deserves credit for his absolutely brilliant concepts surrounding everything we know and enjoy about the genre he writes in. However, this book is not without fault. Far from it, in fact. While the genuis and concept are definately there, the story that is applied to them is terribly underwhelming. Ultimately, Card's mistake lies in that the story does not have a purpose. What it lacks is a character who can challenge our protagonist, pose a threat to him. Rigg and his family have been given extrodinary powers, but to do what with? Who has the ability to pose a challenge to Rigg? Ultimately no one, which makes the story a slow and tedious read with little development along the way, unless of course you take it this series as it seems to be: again, a textbook on sci-fi/fantasy and nothing more.
And lets not even get started on the dialouge. There is just so much of it. As I said earlier, eighty percent of the book is filled with dialouge of the characters trying to figure out why the heck time travel is even possible and how is works, going back and forth, in a loop, then back again, trying to understand what the consequences will be of any one move they make. Will they disappear? Forget why they even time travelled in the first place? Annoy their readers? Beats me, and them apparently, because in the end they decide that the English language was only created for one time, the present, and trying to explain time is pointless. Unfortunately, they only figure this out after boring most readers for six hundred pages with their back and forth arguments. Personally, I found the dialouge a bit bittersweet. I love that I was able to finally wrap my mind around certain parts of the time space continuum, but disappointed that that was all the depth the story had. No riveting plot twists, no real, difining characters, just time, science and dilouge.
Any way you look at it, Pathfinder is pure genius in concept, but very disappointing in story. I will be finishing the series, because the brilliance of finally having time anomaly explained has captivated me, but since the story and characters were so underwhelming, I'll be reading a few other series before returning to this one. Overall, if you're a die hard sci-fi/fantasy fan, writer, or thinker, you will probably benefit form "studying" this series (again, textbook), but if you read for the story, the legendary fight between good and evil, characters that make you laugh and cry, then you may not find what you're looking for here.
Rating:
3 out of 5
