Orson Scott Card is a writer I lost interest in collecting after reading Xenocide (sucks) and Prentice Alvin (not great). But I chanced across these quite cheap on eBay and picked them up.
All bought for $5 a book, so effectively 1/5th cover price for the later volumes. Heartfire I didn’t have (the romance novel title and cover were additionally off-putting), while Alvin Journeyman and Prentice Alvin replace unsigned copies. I already had copies of Seventh Son and Red Prophet inscribed to me by Card at Sercon 2 in Austin in 1988, so I’ll have signed copies of those two (part of the same lot) available in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog.
Card fell out of favor not only with myself, but with other SF readers, some for reasons related to the quality of his writing (see above), some for the fact that he was just putting out too many books in too many series to keep track of (I never read the Homecoming series, but a friend that did was not enthused), and some for political reasons extrinsic to the quality of his work (people who demand fealty to “social justice” seem quite intolerant of Mormonism).
I picked up a good bit of Card’s early hardback firsts before I stopped reading him, and I’ve heard good things about Hart’s Hope, so I may try to read that next year.
Tags: Books, Fantasy, Orson Scott Card