The Memory of Earth: Final Review

"The Memory of Earth" is a somewhat interesting sort of science fiction book. The Memory of Earth is the first book of the Homecoming Saga by Orson Scott Card, also known for his other book "Ender's Game". The story itself takes place in the desert, possibly a couple hundred years ago told through a third person point of view. Nafai, the main protagonist is a young man who lives in a city called Basilica. Instead of living on Earth, as I thought the title implied, Nafai and his family live on a distant planet known as Harmony. The planet holds true to the name it was given, harmony throughout the land, but not for long, as turmoil is in the air. The Over soul, a powerful super computer watches over all of Harmony. The inhabitants of the world have been specially modified so that the Over soul is able to remotely control people's thoughts. All this work to preserve the harmony...yet it is losing control. What may be surprising to most is how the simple life of the population mixes in together with sophisticated technology. Technology such as refrigeration, finger print scanning, and hovering chairs, used side by side with camels and caravans. As the book progresses, relationships will be broken, relationships mended, secrets revealed, secrets hidden. Complete with lust, friendship, faith, action, and vengeance, the first of the five book series offers an in depth look into the life of an ordinary boy turned upside in the midst of a war for power. “The Memory of Earth” will catch the eyes of readers with patience, and a taste for slower-paced novels.

How would you describe the author's style of writing? What's your opinion of the style?

When I heard the hype of “Ender’s Game”, written by Orson Scott Card, I naturally assumed that his other books would be as interesting. I have never read Ender’s Game, but hearing from classmates and teachers, it seems like a pretty well- written and exciting book. The Memory of Earth on the other hand, is a book in which the reader has to read and reread to understand certain parts of the book. They have to read well into the last few chapters since the author has stretched to the brink of boring the reader out of their minds. Orson Scott Card’s style of writing in this book is not bad, but is still needs a bit of refining. While I was reading the book, I encountered many chapters where the only thing happening is a conversation. When I encounter paragraphs where it just seems the paragraphs are used to take up space, like the conversation between Nafai and Issib, where Nafai says “...I study history all the time. I left my class behind years ago. I know something about how wars start and who wins them. And this is the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard. Potokgavan has no chance of holding this area and no compelling reason to try. All that will happen is they ‘ll send an army, provoke the Gorayni into attacking, and then they’ll realize they can’t win and go home.” I end up skipping pages because of all the non essential information provided. The information is not unlike the things in Patient Zero, but the extra information provided in Patient Zero actually has a purpose. I can’t vouch for the other books Orson Scott has written, but I don’t think that The Memory of Earth is his best work, all the reviews I have searched rate the series as mediocre and not as good as the other books he has written.

Pick a character that interested you and write about them in depth.

           

Nafai, the protagonist of the series is a young man who is basically the interpreter for the Over soul. Born in the city of Basilica, Nafai is a tall, well-built, eighteen year-old-boy. He is the youngest son of wealthy parents, Wetchik Volemak who is the most prominent man in Basilica, and Rasa the most well- known woman in Basilica. He has three brothers: Elemak, Mebbekew, and Issib. Studious, and a thinker, he led a normal life, thinking about things boys worry about at his age like marriage, finding a trade, and planning for the future. One day, everything changes because he hears the voice of the Over soul in his thoughts after Nafai and his brothers and father are banished from Basilica and are forced to live in the desert. He’s going through his normal routine one day, and the next he’s in the desert using skills he has learned to stay alive. Everything he learned before has changed. Rules that have never been broken for thousands of years have suddenly been broken. Nafai himself has to break a rule to follow the Over souls orders. Nafai is an interesting character to talk about because he is so cunning and he is able to adapt quickly to everything that happened. Unfortunately, everyone has faults and his biggest fault is his big mouth. There’s one thing that Nafai has not been able to change about himself, and that is he can never seem to keep his mouth shut. Little disputes where he and his brothers argue over something ridiculous and he just HAS to have the last word. For instance, in one of the many fights with his brother Elemak: “…Nafai knew he should let Elemak’s taunt go unanswered, shouldn’t provoke him anymore. But the very fact that he looked up to Elemak so much made it impossible for Nafai to leave the gibe unanswered.” His big mouth also gets him in trouble with his brothers when they bargain with Gaballufix and loses their inheritance because he thought that his more experienced brother was going to lose their one chance to acquire the Index. I haven’t read the other four books in the series, but making an educated guess, I think that Nafai will learn to become the man he wants to be, through trial and error, and with the help of the all powerful Over soul.

The Memory of Earth: Part 3

     The third part of "The Memory of Earth" is just as boring to me as the other two sections. My God... it’s a freaking sleep aid. I...I can't read any more... it’s just so plain. By the time I got to section three, I pretty much knew what was going to happen. There are I think five other volumes continuing this story... what is he going to write about? I seriously cannot read the others. This is probably the only book I wouldn't want to read. As the story advances, Nafai and his brothers are forced into situations where both paths of the roads are dangerous. Along the way they just keep going over the same things. How Nafai or one of his brothers does something that he has already done before. It's just so repetitive. The parts describing the women being more powerful than men in politics, reverse roles have already come up several times, yet Nafai still seems to be puzzled whenever he meets a woman... During certain parts of the book, while I was reading about something awkward happening to the characters, I would put the book down and just stop reading awhile and go take a nap. I just have so many pet peeves and one of them has to do with reading about an awkward situation. The biggest problem of all is that fact that there are so many small conflicts in the book. It’s alright to have a few here and there, but so many all together, plus the major conflict of the book makes it hard for me to follow each one. The storyline skips around to one conflict, and then another one from another point of view, instead of several conflicts organized so that I don’t have to remind myself what’s happening.

Why are you reading this? Just Cause.....2

A new game was released not so long ago. Just Cause 2, which is a sandbox game, aka a free- roaming game. Similar to the Grand Theft Auto series if you're into that genre. Just Cause 2 follows largely in the footsteps of its predecessor, so if you played the first one you can skip to the next paragraph. You play as James Bond/ Batman, aka Rico Rodriguez. He's a specialist in regime change and jumping off things that are quite high up, so that's what the whole game is going to be based off of and what you're going to be doing. He's off to Panau, where your bosses ( I'm assuming that he is working for the CIA) are unhappy about the new president. They're also unhappy with the fact that his old mentor, Tom Sheldon (who is like the most American man you would ever meet. ) is looking like he's gone rogue and may have defected. Rico's job? Find and if needed, exterminate the target.
So Square Enix has supplied you with a grappling hook, which the in-game advice tells you there are lots of uses for. There's the obvious – latching on to things and reeling yourself in to either get up high or just move about a bit quicker. You can also use it to get yourself a bit of speed up and then use your parachute, gliding serenely across the landscape a darn site faster than you would plodding along on your two little legs. This technique is known as slingshotting (pretty cool huh?).
The missions themselves offer up a good amount of variety. There aren't as many of them as you'd perhaps like, but the assorted base captures, hijacks, race-against-time missions and everything else stops things from getting boring. They also offer up some good set piece play. Riding a bike straight off a cliff so you can parachute onto a limo, take control of it then drive it straight through several roadblocks is very cool.
Now with a massive location and a ton of action going on you may wonder if the graphics are up to par, and I was very impressed by the jungle locales in the game. I am used to a lot of jankiness in sandbox games, but this is remarkably solid and looks lush with falling trees and the great explosions. Though you won’t want to get too distracted by the beautiful sights on the island as you are more than likely to run into some Panau government agentswho will take great pleasure in blasting you to bits. Sadly the gunfights are a low point in the game. The AI have incredible accuracy, forcing you to stay behind cover, but this is not a major problem when there are more fun and inventive ways to take out your foes.

Part Two: The Memory of Earth

Alright, I have completed the next section of "The Memory of Earth". The book is starting to make sense to me now. I understand a lot about the people living on this planet called Harmony. It is a weird feeling, reading about a world where women run the place and men don't. To start off, the four brothers Elemak, Mebbekew, Nafai, and Issib are part of some plan of the oversoul and disrupts the flow of daily life in Basilica where they live. I needed to reread some parts of the book because of things like this. It is very difficult to follow sometimes because of the way the book is written I'm guessing. Within the second paper clip, much more gruesome and horrifying acts and events pop up than the preceding section. As I read more, and the events unfold, things become clearer but problems also keep arising too. There is a noticeable difference in word choice and the descriptions used. Actually, quite a bit has changed since the beginning of the story. Where there once was trust, is now replaced with contempt, corruption, and envy. I find that The Memory if Earth is confusing now because I haven't read about that yeti thing on the cover of the book. There are also some things I wonder about now. For instance, how come these people have a supercomputer, sattelites, hovering chairs, laser swords (or something like that) but their ways of living are pretty primitive. They use camels and caravans and things like that. How can they have such advanced technology but still live like that. This quetions keeps popping up as I said before and it hasn't been answered yet. The book is getting kind of interesting now because there's some gore and things like that.

Part One: The Memory of Earth

Well, I've just finished reading the first section of "The Memory Of Earth" by Orson Scott. The toughest part of reading a new book is The transition from the action packed book, "Patient Zero" that contained the usual zombies in a post-apocalyptic world to a more subtle and laid back genre. When I first noticed what Alvin had chosen, I was of course skeptical. I took one glance at the cover and wondered to myself whether this book was worth reading or not. The cover in general was a tad intriguing. The cover portrays a quiet scene that emits a sense of serenity. Two boys, one in some sort of hovering device are strolling through a marketplace if some sort while merchants are setting up shop. Unfortunately that's not what intrigues me. It is the fact that a gargantuan beast of perhaps a form of yeti is part of the scene. From what
I have read so far, this story takes place in a desert on not Earth, but a whole different planet called Harmony. I never knew it but I am surprised by the contrast between the old ways doing things, things like camels and caravans mixing together with futuristic features like "floats" which are like things that permit the disabled to move freely and without restraint.
I'm not very impressed by this so far but I'll give it a chance since it is just the beginning or the book after all. Everything is very misleading with the Oversoul being a computer that helps control humans and I find that hard to comprehend. It reminds me of our in class discussions of the human race starting to become attached to technology. The Memory of Earth looks pretty interesting and all but I just can't get interested in it enough.