{"id":1702,"date":"2019-10-09T15:00:38","date_gmt":"2019-10-09T21:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1702"},"modified":"2019-10-14T09:54:01","modified_gmt":"2019-10-14T15:54:01","slug":"alvin-journeyman-1995","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2019\/10\/09\/alvin-journeyman-1995\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: Alvin Journeyman (1995)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><b><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft \" src=\"https:\/\/i.gr-assets.com\/images\/S\/compressed.photo.goodreads.com\/books\/1294279802l\/10131575.jpg\" alt=\"Alvin Journeyman\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\">Alvin Journeyman<\/b><\/span><br \/>\nYear: 1995<br \/>\nAuthor: Orson Scott Card<br \/>\nLength: 902 minutes \/ 15.03 hours<\/p>\n<p>With this fourth book in the&nbsp;<em>Alvin Maker<\/em>&nbsp;series, I\u2019m starting to see why a lot of writers like to stick to trilogies. If anything, I think most readers can probably skip this volume and move on to the next one because there wasn\u2019t anything too new or interesting that happened in it. If anything, it was a re-hash of events in the previous book with a few new characters added to it. I will concede that&nbsp;<em>Alvin Journeyman<\/em>&nbsp;did finally develop a fitting antagonist for Alvin. Still, so few pages were dedicated to this sub-plot that I\u2019m wondering if it should have just been pulled out and made into its own novella that would span the gap between book three and book five.<\/p>\n<p>Once again, the strength of the series as a whole carries through here, and some loose character arcs are tied up before moving on to more important things. However, spending the majority of the book hashing over what astute readers (or even readers who were moderately paying attention in the last few books) already knew as truth just to confirm to the rest of the characters around Alvin that he wasn\u2019t lying seemed like a waste of words.<\/p>\n<p>If anything, using the delay in Alvin\u2019s journey to develop Calvin\u2019s \u201cmaking\u201d abilities did provide a bit of contrast between the two and will likely pay off when the forces of good and evil clash in future volumes. I still appreciate the way Orson Scott Card integrates actual history with a fantasy explanation, though. Despite the missed step here, I\u2019ll continue with the series to see how it resolves. At the very least, volumes like this show me why it\u2019s not as notable as the&nbsp;<em>Ender Saga<\/em>, which was a solid four book set (that\u2019s really just three books with the third split into two parts).<\/p>\n<p>A weak link in the&nbsp;<em>Alvin Maker<\/em>&nbsp;series, I give&nbsp;<em>Alvin Journeyman<\/em> 3.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\"><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alvin Journeyman Year: 1995 Author: Orson Scott Card Length: 902 minutes \/ 15.03 hours With this fourth book in the&nbsp;Alvin Maker&nbsp;series, I\u2019m starting to see why a lot of writers like to stick to trilogies. If anything, I think most readers can probably skip this volume and move on to the next one because there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,54],"tags":[1772,2036,2037,55,554,8],"class_list":["post-1702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-0-stars","category-book","tag-1772","tag-alvin-journeyman","tag-alvin-maker","tag-book","tag-orson-scott-card","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1702"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1709,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions\/1709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}