{"id":1718,"date":"2004-01-24T11:54:41","date_gmt":"2004-01-24T16:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2004\/01\/24\/1718.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:45:19","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:45:19","slug":"book-report-the-crystal-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2004\/01\/24\/book-report-the-crystal-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: The Crystal City"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Like many people, I read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hatrack.com\/\">Orson Scott Card<\/a>&#8217;s <i>Seventh Son<\/i>(New York: Tor 1987) and went nuts for the world of Hatrack River and Vigor Church. I was eager for the next in the Alvin Maker series, and if <i>Red Prophet<\/i> (New York: Tor 1988) wasn't as good as the first book, I have no recollection of being disappointed. <i>Prentice Alvin<\/i> (New York: Tor 1989) was magnificent. And then, well, Orson Scott Card wrote a bunch of lousy books (which, in 1989, I would not have believed possible). And then he wrote a lousy Alvin Maker book, <i>Alvin Journeyman<\/i> (New York: Tor 1995). OK, not lousy. <i>Heartfire<\/i> (New York: Tor 1998) was lousy. <i>Journeyman<\/i> just wasn't very good. So anyway, when I saw that <i>The Crystal City<\/i> (New York: Tor 2003) had been published I didn't exactly go right out and buy it. Which is good, because it was dreadful, and I doubt I'll ever want to read it again. Back to the library it goes, but it leaves behind it a question: Is it good to recommend <\/i>Seventh Son<\/i> to the uninitiate, knowing that it will eventually lead to people reading this crap? Or is it better for people not to bother reading two (or possibly three) really good books just because the story is incomplete, and the only way to finish the narrative is to plow through three or four books of no value at all? I mean, if you want to read the beginning of <i>Edwin Drood<\/i>, at least you know that there <i>is<\/i> no ending--that's better than a bad ending, right?\n\n<p>Redintegro Iraq<br>-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like many people, I read Orson Scott Card\u2019s Seventh Son(New York: Tor 1987) and went nuts for the world of Hatrack River and Vigor Church. I was eager for the next in the Alvin Maker series, and if Red Prophet&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16889,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718\/revisions\/16889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}