The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card

Somec: the miracle drug that allowed the rich and well connected to sleep through the centuries and postpone death almost indefinitely.  While the masses continued to live out their lives in normal time, the social elite watched over centuries as their investments multiplied, and their kingdoms grew into empires…

…and ultimately crumbled.

Thousands of years have passed.  Somec is unknown, except to the one man who saved humanity from its own corruption.  He has slept through the eons to find out if his last gambit brought about the peaceful and benevolent society that he hoped to leave behind.

But as he awakens from his slumber, he finds himself in a universe infinitely stranger than he could have imagined–among a people who revere him as their god.

I’ve heard that Orson Scott Card considers this book his best work, and I’d have to say, I agree with him.  Right up until the ending, it’s at least as good–if not better–than Ender’s Game, his most famous book.

The book unfolds magically from the first page, drawing you in to this beautiful, fantastical world.  The characters have depth and feeling, especially the ones from ages long past, whose stories are powerful and haunting.

I absolutely loved this book–right up to the end, which had a twist that caught me off guard, and not in a good way.

Story-wise, the ending was great.  It was a beautifully foreshadowed twist, right on the order of Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead.  Thematically, however, I had a hard time not feeling that it undermined everything that had come before.  I can’t get into details because I don’t want to give spoilers, but the last couple of pages jolted me out of the book and left me saying: “Huh?  How is that right?” I eventually warmed up to it, but it took a while.

Still, I’d definitely give the book five stars, or at least four and a half.  Everything about it is monumentally amazing.  The characters, the worldbuilding, the sense of wonder, the thought-provoking questions and issues it raises, and just the sheer joy of the experience of reading it.  This is a book that I can get lost in, and not just once.

As a side note, the book includes the short novel The Worthing Chronicles, as well as several short stories that take place in the same universe.  The short stories were all quite good, but personally I preferred the novel by itself.  Perhaps it’s because the epic scope came through so much better in the novel than in the stories, or because the stories didn’t allow me to spend much time with any of the characters.  Your mileage may vary, of course.

Interestingly, The Worthing Chronicles is a retelling of Hot Sleep, Orson Scott Card’s first novel.  As a writer, I find it interesting that Card revisited his first novel in this way–to basically rewrite it, keeping all the major events but telling it from the point of view of someone who meets the main character of the first (Worthing) much later in his life.  I haven’t read Hot Sleep, so I can’t compare the two, but The Worthing Chronicles turned out amazingly well.

Will I ever attempt something like this?  Not sure–but it’s interesting to think about.