Lost and Found

I think the premise of the story is super interesting and that's why I continued listening to the end. I'm not sure why I expected anything other than some smarter than everyone else around him boy becoming a hero while he is praised by nearly every adult he comes in contact with, even those that he's in opposition with.

I used to love Orson Scott Cards writing but at this point I don't know if I have outgrown him as a reader or if he has just gotten worse as a writer. Maybe a bit of both.

Ezekiel is a 14 yr old boy with a micro power to find lost things and return them to their owners. The premise may be the best thing about this book. The local police enlist his help to find a kidnapped girl who was kidnapped by a child porn ring

My biggest problems with this book is despite its short length less than 300 pages Card basically tells the same story twice. First a little girl is kidnapped and ezekiel finds her then his friend Beth is kidnapped by the same people and guess what he finds her. This book could have easily been split into 2 short stories and it would not have made a difference.

The micropower group Ezekiel gets invovled with had really stupid powers like odor removal or making people yawn, that served no benefit to the story or even seemed remotley relevant to the story or plot. While I can see this group helping him explore his powers the book completely failed to to really capitlize on that in any meaningful way.

This group even goes with him to find beth but he abandons them and his micro power group is not invovled in anyway so what was the point of that?

The characters i didnt care for. They were boring and cliche in so many ways. The angry teenager rebelling against authority. The small loner kid that no one wants to hang out with. Despite the tragedy these characters have in their life Card really failed to make me care about them in any meaningful way.

It really felt like Card was going for the most evil thing he could think of, a child porn sex trafficing ring as the villian but then completely failed to really explore the impact and trauma this caused on our characters. We spent virtually no time with the victims during their captivity and all our time with ezekiel and those looking for the victims leaving the story flat, bland and boring.

If we just had some POV chapters from the victims expierence it might have made a huge difference to the outcome of the book and quality of the writing.

All in all this was just a bad book. Did not like it at all

3 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews

Summary
Ezekiel can find lost things - he just knows where they are. So far, that's only gotten him into trouble with adults who think he's just a thief. But then Beth, who has her own set of issues, attaches herself to him on their way to school, and won't let him shake her off. Together, they find out just how useful a friend can be - especially if it's a friend with a micropower.

Review
Orson Scott Card has always been an exceptionally talented writer - right from his ‘this is my Master's thesis' Hart's Hope. He doesn't always pull it off - I've skipped some books and not enjoyed others - but there's no question he knows what he's doing.

Card is particularly good at YA stories, in part because his characters speak to children as if they're intelligent beings. That's the angle he shoots for here, and he largely hits the target. The protagonist is a credible teen, and his friends are credible teens, especially because they don't talk like typical fictional teens; they talk like young people who think.

Card doesn't get everything right. Ezekiel's father is way too accommodating and cool to be credible, and there's a bit too much clever banter. While the dialogue and emotions are often deep, the plot is fairly shallow - in fact, it feels like a plot thought up by a young adult; a bit simplistic, with far too much coincidence. That's a good part of what keeps the book from being more enjoyable, and it's odd, because Card is a remarkably well-rounded writer, and can plot with the best of them.

There are also some throwaway comments that undermine the book's claim to being interestingly philosophical - such as a brief riff on how Ezekiel's father, a butcher, is too sensitive to actually kill animals - but just fine, apparently with mocking people who don't actually eat animals. I guess that so long as the blood's not directly on his hands, everything is cool. Card's personal philosophy - with which I heartily disagree - shows through in a few other places as well, but not quite so blatantly or hypocritically.

In short, a good book for intelligent teens, but marred by sloppy plotting that keeps it from being as good as it could be.