A while ago I read the first book in Orson Scott Card's Homecoming series: The Memory Of Earth. It was interesting enough that when I came across the second book in the series, The Call Of Earth, it snagged me. Unfortunately it wasn't quite so good. The book dragged on quite a bit. Card expanded a lot on the concept of the Oversoul that he created in the first book. However, I think that was the problem with the book. He took it too far.

This book is very much in line with the way Card writes his book. A lot of head games. A lot of twisted concepts that try to get you to think out of the box. In fact, he uses this approach to bring a person to challenge their own way of thinking of things in the real world. This story is no different. While masquerading behind a veil of a moral system that conservatives today consider reprehensible, Card smuggles in a deeply moral argument for the existence of God. Even the active role of God in everyday lives.

It's not too hard to detect strong LDS themes in the stories. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's an allegory since I don't know the LDS stories all that well. It could be that an LDS reader would find a lot more parallels that I noticed. But it seems that there is at least a superficial resemblance between the lives of the main characters and the stories of the early LDS members.

By this time, though, I'm sure I've lost interest in the series and I don't think I'll bother with the rest of the books.

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