I had read Orson Scott Card's Mithermage Series in 2015 (see https://timsbestreads.blogspot.com/p/i-read-available-mithermage-stories-way.html) and found the final book of the series rather disappointing. So I was in two minds as to whether I would read more of his books.
I did relent in 2022, reading the Pathfinder Series, which I found excellent
Pathfinder 2010
Ruins 2012
Visitors 2014
The narrative follows the adventures of a young man named Rigg, an unknowing colonist of a planet called Garden in a seemingly medieval state of scientific advancement. Rigg, at first a fur trapper's apprentice who has been educated in nearly every skill by a mysterious figure claiming to be his father, prominently exhibits a seemingly magical ability to see "paths" (hence the series' title), or the physical traces of living entities through time, to his benefit. Rigg and his companions, a band of unlikely friends, young and old, who have similar time-altering abilities, travel across Garden through many varied societies and environments to use their talents for personal benefit and heroics. The story line develops in parallel with another story which converges as the story of the colonization of Garden by Terrans some 11,000 years in the past.
The series is critically acclaimed for its fast-paced, yet detailed, action, and the complex international power games that characterize much of Orson Scott Card's latest works. Some readers did complain that the ending of the series did feel "lazy" or weak, the writing uneven, but I did not feel that way.
Card delivers perfectly on the various time paradoxes that occur, with some of the theories and twists very complex. Each book in the series builds up to something bigger, with the main characters encountering more and more complex situations.
A work of huge imagination that delivers. It's 5 stars for me.
