posted
Hey all, I was just looking through the OSC books that Cornell's library has and in it was Homebody. I have never seen it in any bookstores. Has anyone read it? What do you think of it?
Posts: 2867 | Registered: May 2005
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I liked it -- although I found it to be very different in style than his other books. It runs along the lines of mystery/horror/ghost type story -- very different book than his Ender series.
I'm not sure where it fits (chronologically) with his writings -- whether it was something he wrote before his big hits with the Ender series and Alvin Maker series, or whether it is something he wrote more recently.
If you like his new "sneak peek" preview of "Magic Street" (the first chapters are previewed on this web site), then you will probably like Homebody.
posted
I definately liked the Magic Street that I read. Hopefully this summer I'll be able to read Homebody among all the other books on the list. The library has some other books of his that I haven't read either such as Treason and Treasure Box and the Maps in a Mirror short stories that I want to get my hands on.
Posts: 2867 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Homebody is a definite departure for OSC. If it had been the first OSC book I read, I might not have read another. There's another book, that I believe is called Treasure Box, which has a similar feel. I prefered Homebody over T.B. but of all his horror genre, Lost Boys is the best. Homebody came out in the early 90's, I think, after the first Ender series but way before the Shadow series.
Posts: 26 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
Homebody is probably one of my least favorites of all of OSC's stuff. Which means that it's still pretty good, of course. It's not particularly original or life-changing, but it's a good read. Treasure Box is very similar in style and type. Both feel very much like films -- particulary Homebody.
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posted
I loved Treasure Box. It freaks me out in ways that Stephen King never could. I won't spoil it for anyone by going in to details, but there are some scenes and ideas in that book which are very, very spooky.
Homebody, I enjoyed almost as much. I know I'm probably in the minority here, but I love OSC's tales of dread. Posts: 1528 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Homebody began as a screenplay, which I then adapted - so it's my first novelization of my own movie. Now if I could just get the movie made. But it's not really horror (I'm not interested in horror), it's a love story with ghosts - more like The Uninvited, which, by no coincidence, is one of my favorite old movies. But who ever heard of a romantic ghost movie?
Oh, wait. What about GHOST? Heck, I even wrote a part for Whoopi Goldberg, but everyone in Hollywood is terrified of filming Homebody because it doesn't fit inside any of the ordinary genre boxes ... bummer ...
Needless to say, I like the story a lot or I wouldn't have told it. But it's definitely aimed at a different audience than my sci-fi; so I'm not surprised at all that at least some of my readers would enjoy it less than my science fiction; just as there are other readers who enjoy my tales of dread more than my sci-fi.
Since my goal is to write to the ideal audience for each particular story, and I recognize that that will NEVER include everybody, I'm content.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
I liked Homebody, Enchantment was great, Magic Street looks very promising, and Lost Boys remains my absolute favorite of OSC's works (even though none of these are sci-fi, which is my genre of choice), but Treasure Box just seemed very, very weak to me. There were no surprises, and it seemed to lack any real conundrums for the characters to work out. The light romance towards the end (mind you, I appreciated that it was light and didn't take center stage) was also just a little too convenient.
Posts: 293 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
As far as his tales of dread go, my favorites are the short stories in Maps In a Mirror. Some of those are really, really freaky, basically the entire section of the "dread" stories. I really like how Card stays away from the standard horror conventions of lots of gore and killing and everything, it's much more effective to leave it up to the reader's imagination.
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