EARTHBORN

The fifth and last volume in Card's sprawling Homecoming saga (Earthfall, reviewed in our Nov. 15, 1994, issue). The travelers from planet Harmony, with their ailingcomputer Oversoul, reached Earth but could not determine the whereabouts of the mysterious, powerful keeper of Earth. Now, 500 years later, only Shedemei the Navigator of the original travelers survives. The keeper, a sort of Gaean planetary consciousness, still cannot be located, though his/her influence is manifest; and still the three intelligent species — subterranean diggers, flying angels, and humans — have not learned how to get along. The stage is set for another struggle between the forces of enlightenment and those of repression and bigotry. More than parable, not quite allegory, Card's far-future religious saga manages, brilliantly, to be at once entertaining, unobjectionable, and edifying.