Homecoming

I intended to read the Homecoming series by Orson Scott Card a long time ago.  I bought all of them during college (along with Alvin Maker, Ender and Shadow series, the various short story collections and many of his stand-alone novels.)  But for some reason, I just never made time for them.

Then I went on my mission to Texas, and mission rules being as strict as they are (no recreational reading among them), I realized that I’d run out of time to read that particular series.  So I set them aside and promised myself that as my reward for serving those two years, they would be the first thing I read.

Almost two years after my mission (which makes nearly four years since I made myself that promise) I finally got around to reading the blasted books.  And yes, they were fantastic.

There are five books in the series but, really, they are two different stories: the first four books are the saga of the Wetchik’s family and the last book is centuries after and their descendants are busy screwing things up.

On the planet Harmony, humankind is on the verge of repeating Earth’s history where they could bring about their own extinction.  The Oversoul, the computer system programmed to protect them from that, is failing.  The Oversoul selects one family to leave the planet and return to Earth, where they can rebirth their homeworld and the Oversoul will find guidance in how to proceed with the human race on Harmony.

The real story is much more small-scale: Wetchik’s family is divided among itself as to whether they should endure the hardships of continual migration the Oversoul commands them to, or remain where they are in relative comfort and ease.  The division is so heated that it comes to murder by the time the journey is through.

I could see Card raising the bar for himself in this series.  When discussing writing, he often makes the case for how every character is the hero of their own story.  In a society of sixteen, he managed to give them all a moment in the spotlight and prove that he could make each character the hero of their own tale.  True, Nafai, Elemak and Luet are the principal movers and shakers of this piece, Rasa, Zdorab, Shedemei, and Eaidh all felt just as important when it came time for their part in this orchestra of family drama.  It was fascinating to see it all come together.

If I had to pick, The Call of Earth was my favorite installment, mostly for the wonderful setting of Basilica, the City of Women.  This place is a matriarchal society where Rasa, the matriarch of Wetchik’s family, is clearly the boss.  The politics are intriguing and it is heartbreaking to watch how everything she’s worked to sustain falls apart around her.

And yet, while there is an approaching army, many of the problems are self-induced.  The marriage custom is the driving force that ruins them.  Part of the control women have in this society is that they only enter into one-year contracts with their husbands.  If they want to keep with the man, they sign on for another year, but if not, they move onto the next eligible man.  It totally eradicates the need for divorce, but creates some complicated family relations, and it’s really this custom that causes most of the fights within Rasa and Wetchik’s own family long after emigrating from Basilica.

The Wetchik saga may be about the decades’ long journey to go to Earth, but what the story is about is a family practicing a new order of monogamy and discovering the joys that come from obeying it and the tragedies that occur when they don’t.

The last novel, Earthborn, is a fitting conclusion for the series, but more as a way of tying up loose ends that weren’t necessary to be tied up in the fourth book.  Starting in The Ships of Earth, there were hints of two alien, or rather, evolved species they would encounter on earth: the bat-like “angels” and the rat-like “diggers.”  Card doesn’t deal with different sentient species much, but when he does, he goes the extra mile to make them real.  And when Wetchik’s family meets them in Earthfall, forming relations with the two species is intriguing and almost as much fun as the other stuff.

Earthborn is about Wetchik’s descendants rebuilding their society to make the humans, diggers, and angels equal with each other, and that becomes no small task especially with the opposition involved.

Note to the Latter-day Saints: this story is based off the Nephi story, or the first 50-60 pages of the Book of Mormon, and Earthborn is based on Alma the Younger’s redemption.  Some I’ve talked to who’ve read the series were incredibly annoyed by that.  To all ye in that camp: get a life.