In my opinion, Orson Scott Card is one of the best storytellers of modern times. He conveys the motivations of characters, even villains, in such a convincing way that readers are able to immerse themselves fully in the dynamics of the narrative. He is also a singularly impressive world-builder, drawing us in to new worlds and universes through his story-telling. This was the case with Ender's Game, with Seventh Son, with Pathfinder and The Lost Gate. It was also the case with The Memory of Earth, which introduces the Homecoming series.
I read all five of the Homecoming books and enjoyed every one of them. Afterwards, when I went to prepare these reviews through a bit of research, I was stunned to discover that the entire series is a thinly veiled adaptation of the Book of Mormon: a family called by God to travel from Jerusalem to the "promised land" of America. Joseph Smith may have been a false prophet extraordinaire, but he was evidently a singularly impressive story-teller (that or he simply benefited from the proximity to Card's genius). While the original setting of Homecoming, the city of Basilica on the world of Harmony, is officially a Slavic matriarchy, the feel of the place remains pretty clearly Aramaic in nature, so even such atmospheric details are preserved. More notably, many of the events are the same, and even the names are retained in something like their original form. Where events or names are parallel, I will insert the equivalent from the Book of Mormon in parentheses.
