Farseed (Seed, #2)

Mar 05, 2009 Phoebe rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: kiddie-lit, sciffy, loved-it

In this terrific and long awaited sequel to Pamela Sargent's Earthseed, Sargent presents teen readers with an exciting survival story lightly laced with science fiction elements. Characters from the less cohesive first volume appear, but the real focus is on the teenaged protagonists Leila and Nuy, children from warring factions of a Terran colony on a distant planet they've come to call "Home."

These heroines are very well developed and quite strong. Although they are still nominally children i...more

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Mar 09, 2013 Natalie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013, young-adult, series, sci-fi, childrens-lit

Very boring.

The idea is a good one. Earth is dead. Some of the humans created Ship to carry human "seeds" to another inhabitable planet. Ship did that. Now it has been decades since Ship left the colonizers on Home. Ho took a group of people off and now his daughter, Nuy, is wondering if her father's way is really the best way. When she encounters three people who come from the main settlement she tries to lead one back to her father with disastrous consequences. Now she is on the run with the...more

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Jul 12, 2010 Karin rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: young-adult-fiction, science-fiction, future, other-worlds, space, spaceships, teenagers, colonists, borrowed-from-the-library

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Ship left a colony of humans on Home – another Earth-like planet. The initial settlement eventually split into two, with Ho’s group going to live in some caves near the sea. For awhile the two settlements continue to meet to trade, but as Ho’s settlement shrinks and he becomes more insane all contact between the two groups ceases. Several years later, three individuals from Zoheret and Aleksandr’s settlement are sent to investigate the lapse in communication. Nuy, Ho’s daughter, encounters one o...more Ship left a colony of humans on Home – another Earth-like planet. The initial settlement eventually split into two, with Ho’s group going to live in some caves near the sea. For awhile the two settlements continue to meet to trade, but as Ho’s settlement shrinks and he becomes more insane all contact between the two groups ceases. Several years later, three individuals from Zoheret and Aleksandr’s settlement are sent to investigate the lapse in communication. Nuy, Ho’s daughter, encounters one of the outsiders first and brings him back to meet her father. Ho is so crazy by that time that he murders the outsider as soon as he sets eyes on him. Fearing his daughter may have been infected by the outsiders, he casts her out as well. Nuy flees from her father’s rage and manages to find the two other outsiders. One of them is injured and she helps care for him until he is healthy enough to travel. After many months Nuy and her companions decide to try to return to their settlement. In the meantime, however, Zoheret has led another expedition into the area to discover what has become of her and Ho’s people. Ho attacks their encampments and it is only through Nuy’s assistance that they are able to defeat Ho’s small, but determined force.

I read Earthseed many years ago when I was in middle school, and it was one of my favorite books. I longed for a sequel, and now, many years later, Pamela Sargent has responded with Farseed. Unfortunately, there’s just not that much content (see above). The people in the settlements have stagnated – one settlement is afraid to embrace Home, and the other has been battered and decimated by illnesses and storms and poor nutrition. The most interesting thing is that the children in Ho’s settlement have adapted genetically to Home (in just one generation) – they’ve become something other than human. And this never gets fully explored. Home itself isn’t fully explored. Its differences from Earth are never truly articulated, and the colonists themselves know little about their new planet. So there are multiple journeys, multiple battles, and not much happens to progress either our or their knowledge. I finished this, but I was rather disappointed.(less)

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Jan 15, 2013 Sarah rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Farseed is slow, and much of the book seems to dissect lifestyles, beliefs and evolutionary differences between two peoples. Once a true “problem” is present to the plot, things do get a bit interesting. That being said, Sargent doesn’t end the book in a satisfying way. In fact, I was fairly confused by why various people did the things they did, and believed what they believed and some of the evolutionary differences were hard to believe given a paltry thirty year gap for them to arise. I didn’...more

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Feb 08, 2013 Melissa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the second in the Seed Trilogy. The first is Earthseed. We pick up this installment several years later and are following the second generation since they were "seeded" on the new planet, Home. We still have the characters from the second book. The main character, Zoheret, from the last book still plays a major part, but plays a secondary character to her daughter, Leila. And although I thought the secondary characters from the last book was too much undefined, that was not the case in t...more

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May 13, 2012 Kwinks rated it 3 of 5 stars

I had a hard time with this one. Perhaps I should not have picked it up just after reading Earthseed?
This one seemed so bogged down in politics, and I finished the book still unsure of what Ho's motivations were. I just did not get him or why anyone would follow him. I cheered for Nuy, but many of her successes seemed based on luck. I also found myself disliking most of the residents of the main settlement and, in my mind, saw the settlement people vs the river people as class warfare that was s...more

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Jul 26, 2012 terpkristin rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, audiobook, adventure, sci-fi, ya

Audiobook from Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Narrated by Amy Rubinate
Length: just under 9 hours

Farseed is the second book in the Seed Trilogy, the follow- up to Earthseed. I enjoyed Earthseed (my review) and looked forward to the continuation of the story.

Sadly, Farseed was not nearly as good as its predecessor. Where Earthseed was a book about a spaceship raising kids, preparing them to "seed" other worlds, Farseed was a book about frontier life. The story takes place approximately 30 years after the e...more

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Feb 17, 2013 Chapter by Chapter rated it 3 of 5 stars

Where in Earthseed, the first installment to the Seed series by Pamela Sargent, captured my attention pretty much from the get go, Farseed, book two took a while for me to get into.

Farseed by Pamela Sargent takes place twenty years from where Earthseed had left off. Ship is still out in space trying to locate more habitable planets for humans, and the original characters from book one are and somewhat wiser.

Although characters that we’ve come to know and love from the first installment are prese...more Where in Earthseed, the first installment to the Seed series by Pamela Sargent, captured my attention pretty much from the get go, Farseed, book two took a while for me to get into.

Farseed by Pamela Sargent takes place twenty years from where Earthseed had left off. Ship is still out in space trying to locate more habitable planets for humans, and the original characters from book one are and somewhat wiser.

Although characters that we’ve come to know and love from the first installment are present in Farseed, book two focuses on the next generation. The children of the original survivors. A group of three original members decide to leave their town to seek out the other tribe that has broken off from them when they first arrived. It had been almost a decade ago since they had last traded with them and seen anyone from that tribe.

What they had hoped would be a simple task turns out to be the complete opposite of what they expected and they end up missing. A young group of the next generation decide to bring forward their proposal to venture out and find out what happened to the missing members. With a well thought out plan, not only do these three get the support they are looking for, but there are others who want to volunteer and join them in their quest. Among them are, Zoheret, the unforgettable heroine in book one, Earthseed. Zoheret steps down from her position as leader to join her daughter, Leila, and her friends to search for her fellow tribe mates and friends.

But Zoheret’s Northern tribe is not the only one with an agenda. Ho’s daughter, Nuy, chances upon the three Northern adults and agrees to take one of them to see her father, Ho. But it seems Ho is still up to his old ways, and his mind is not as stable as it used to be. Violence seems to be Ho’s only agenda…and after fearing that his daughter has brought death to their door, he casts her out from her home and tribe, to fend for herself in the wild. It is then thaa Nuy decides to find the other two Northerners and head back home with them to the North.

But when paths cross, and the lives of family and loved ones are on the line, who’s side will Nuy be on?

What I really enjoyed when reading Farseed by Pamela Sargent was seeing who ended up mating with who. After finishing Earthseed some time ago, I always thought back and wondered what happened to this band of characters, and if the people I hoped would get together…did. Farseed does answer these questions, and we are even introduced to the offspring of these couplings.

As I said earlier, it took me quite a while to get into this book. There really wasn’t much going on in the first bit of the book. I found myself losing interest rather quickly, which was disappointing considering how much I really enjoyed Earthseed! We do get to see Ship in this book, but whether or not Ship decides to make an official appearance is something you’ll have to find out for yourself.

Once the book started to pick up though, it was a fantastic and exciting read! There was always the fear that the characters you’re rooting for end up being discovered and harmed, or that someone somewhere will come out and say that it was their plan all along to lead them on and take them to their impending doom. It was an exciting guessing game of what would happen next, and because of that, I really enjoyed reading it. I know I personally was curious about what happened to the traitorous Ho. I liked that we were given a background of what happened to both tribes in the twenty years that passed, and it felt as though we never really left the story. Author, Pamela Sargent, does a great job of mixing the past and the present together.

What I’m really intrigued about now is what will happen in book 3? We are introduced to the very significant difference between the offspring in Zoheret’s colony and Ho’s tribe. How will that play out? What will it all lead to? I’m curious to see if those that are believed to be dead are really dead, or if they will come back in a soap opera type setting and arise from the “dead”? So many questions!

Fans of book one will be excited to delve back into this world created by Pamela Sargent, and be re-introduced to old characters and introduced to the new ones. Although it is a slow and steady ride in the beginning, it is well worth the wait to be able to be immersed into the action and adventure found inside.(less)

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Feb 24, 2013 Andrea rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult-science-fiction, read-in-2013

Wow, this review is kind of tough to write. The Seed Trilogy has so much going on, and I feel that without some background about book one, Earthseed, some who read this may be lost. To do that would require a lot of details, so check it out on GoodReads; I've provided the link to my review of Earthseed at the bottom of the post. Basically, I described Earthseed as Across the Universe meets The Hunger Games. Pretty cool, right? But don't think this book is a ripoff of those books, Earthseed origi...more Wow, this review is kind of tough to write. The Seed Trilogy has so much going on, and I feel that without some background about book one, Earthseed, some who read this may be lost. To do that would require a lot of details, so check it out on GoodReads; I've provided the link to my review of Earthseed at the bottom of the post. Basically, I described Earthseed as Across the Universe meets The Hunger Games. Pretty cool, right? But don't think this book is a ripoff of those books, Earthseed originally released in the early 1980s, but has since been re-released and optioned for film.

Earthseed ended with the inhabitants of Ship (a spaceship built on an asteroid, with a motherboard that acted as mother/father/teacher), being let off on a new planet. While the humans were on Ship, they broke off into groups, led by Zoheret and Aleksandr, and Ho. Then....flashforward TWENTY YEARS LATER, and that's where Farseed truly begins. And, this is pretty great, the story sort of turns into one that reminds me of LOST (be still my heart). Aleksandr and Zoheret lead the groups in the North. Ho had led his followers South. The two groups initially got along, made trades, but still remained separate. But Ho is a loose cannon. He was very broody and defensive in book one, and I think life on the new planet, dealing with survival and the stresses that it causes, drives him insane. He's brutal, moody, and unhinged. He cuts ties with the other tribe, and will kill any of them who dare come near. When a group of three comes to see Ho, things don't end well, and he ends up banishing his daughter Nuy.

Farseed's main characters are the first generation born on the planet, which they call Home. The two MCs are Nuy and Leila, the daughter of Zoheret. The need to know what happened to the missing members of Zoheret's Northern group drive Leila to push her mother to take of group to the South. On this journey the group experience wonder, suffering, and death. When Leila's group discover Nuy, and begin to work together, changes are spurred and nothing on Home will ever be the same.

Honestly, I know most of this review has been a general summary of Farseed, and for this time, I'm okay with that. Most of the readers I know are not familiar with the series, and if I just sit here and say "OMG, THINGS HAPPENED!", that might not mean much. The writing was very descriptive, but not overly so. I could visualize life on Home, the people, the scenery, even the expressions on the characters' faces. Since the series does jump such a big amount of time, we do miss seeing the new civilization being established. In some ways I think I would have loved that, in others, I was kind of pumped to skip over that and jump into the new adventure. Either way, I really liked Farseed, more than Earthseed.

If you're into SciFi, or even if you're not so much (like me), the Seed Trilogy is so cool. The action, the dynamic between the characters, and the adventure kept me hooked. I can't wait to see how the series ends with the final book, Seed Seeker.
(less)

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Feb 17, 2013 Chapter by Chapter rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Where in Earthseed, the first installment to the Seed series by Pamela Sargent, captured my attention pretty much from the get go, Farseed, book two took a while for me to get into.

Farseed by Pamela Sargent takes place twenty years from where Earthseed had left off. Ship is still out in space trying to locate more habitable planets for humans, and the original characters from book one are and somewhat wiser.

Although characters that we’ve come to know and love from the first installment are prese...more Where in Earthseed, the first installment to the Seed series by Pamela Sargent, captured my attention pretty much from the get go, Farseed, book two took a while for me to get into.

Farseed by Pamela Sargent takes place twenty years from where Earthseed had left off. Ship is still out in space trying to locate more habitable planets for humans, and the original characters from book one are and somewhat wiser.

Although characters that we’ve come to know and love from the first installment are present in Farseed, book two focuses on the next generation. The children of the original survivors. A group of three original members decide to leave their town to seek out the other tribe that has broken off from them when they first arrived. It had been almost a decade ago since they had last traded with them and seen anyone from that tribe.

What they had hoped would be a simple task turns out to be the complete opposite of what they expected and they end up missing. A young group of the next generation decide to bring forward their proposal to venture out and find out what happened to the missing members. With a well thought out plan, not only do these three get the support they are looking for, but there are others who want to volunteer and join them in their quest. Among them are, Zoheret, the unforgettable heroine in book one, Earthseed. Zoheret steps down from her position as leader to join her daughter, Leila, and her friends to search for her fellow tribe mates and friends.

But Zoheret’s Northern tribe is not the only one with an agenda. Ho’s daughter, Nuy, chances upon the three Northern adults and agrees to take one of them to see her father, Ho. But it seems Ho is still up to his old ways, and his mind is not as stable as it used to be. Violence seems to be Ho’s only agenda…and after fearing that his daughter has brought death to their door, he casts her out from her home and tribe, to fend for herself in the wild. It is then thaa Nuy decides to find the other two Northerners and head back home with them to the North.

But when paths cross, and the lives of family and loved ones are on the line, who’s side will Nuy be on?

What I really enjoyed when reading Farseed by Pamela Sargent was seeing who ended up mating with who. After finishing Earthseed some time ago, I always thought back and wondered what happened to this band of characters, and if the people I hoped would get together…did. Farseed does answer these questions, and we are even introduced to the offspring of these couplings.

As I said earlier, it took me quite a while to get into this book. There really wasn’t much going on in the first bit of the book. I found myself losing interest rather quickly, which was disappointing considering how much I really enjoyed Earthseed! We do get to see Ship in this book, but whether or not Ship decides to make an official appearance is something you’ll have to find out for yourself.

Once the book started to pick up though, it was a fantastic and exciting read! There was always the fear that the characters you’re rooting for end up being discovered and harmed, or that someone somewhere will come out and say that it was their plan all along to lead them on and take them to their impending doom. It was an exciting guessing game of what would happen next, and because of that, I really enjoyed reading it. I know I personally was curious about what happened to the traitorous Ho. I liked that we were given a background of what happened to both tribes in the twenty years that passed, and it felt as though we never really left the story. Author, Pamela Sargent, does a great job of mixing the past and the present together.

What I’m really intrigued about now is what will happen in book 3? We are introduced to the very significant difference between the offspring in Zoheret’s colony and Ho’s tribe. How will that play out? What will it all lead to? I’m curious to see if those that are believed to be dead are really dead, or if they will come back in a soap opera type setting and arise from the “dead”? So many questions!

Fans of book one will be excited to delve back into this world created by Pamela Sargent, and be re-introduced to old characters and introduced to the new ones. Although it is a slow and steady ride in the beginning, it is well worth the wait to be able to be immersed into the action and adventure found inside.(less)

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Aug 31, 2012 Stewart rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: dystopia-post-apocalyptic

Farseed is one of those books that took me a while to start enjoying. I won the book through a Goodreads giveaway initially had the thought that it would be terrible because it was another a teen book. And I'll be honest, it is very obviously a book directed a teens. The reading comprehension level is definitely not any higher than that - in fact, my 6 year old could read it and understand what is going on for the most part. However, it is also a very good book and makes up for the lack of depth...more

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Dec 24, 2012 Mitchell rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction, series, owned, young-adult

book 2 in the seed trilogy. An interesting dark ya set about 20 years after some people are dropped off on a colony planet. Mostly it is about the conflict between a splinter group that is slowly dying out and the settled group which is needing to be unsettled some. There could be a lot more here and it could have been less obviously written for YA - but the characters are good. I especially like having the characters really see the other group as alien. More like a 3.5 out of 5.

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Jul 24, 2010 Norah rated it 3 of 5 stars

Set on the planet that the kids from the first book in this series, Earthseed, colonized, this picks up a generation later. It's just as interesting philosophically, but there's major problems with the plot and pacing and structure which made this a frustrating read, even though I was interested in several characters and really wanted to know what would happen. The problem is mainly in trying to tell several storylines, from several points of view, together, and not doing it well.

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Sep 29, 2012 Bistro2012 rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Briana, 17
Pamela Sargent
Farseed
TOR Teen 2012

It has been a while since I read the first book, but this seemed more like a prequel than the sequel it was called on the back. The book itself was well written and engaging. The characters were well developed.

Rating: 4 Better than most

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Dec 30, 2009 Emily rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: colonization, ya, scifi, struggle-to-finish, wanted-to-love

Though I loved Earthseed, I felt like this one was an inadequate sequel. We know that the two groups are going to meet, but the book spent entirely too much time leading up to the confrontation.

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Oct 30, 2008 Sara Diane rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008, young-adult, sci-fi

This is a sequal to Earthseed, one of my favorite books as a teen. Lo and behold, there is a sequal that I didn't know about (which isn't my fault, it took her 20 years to write it! It just came out last year.). While there isn't as much draw in the second one, because it continued the story in part of the characters I fell in love with in the first one, I enjoyed it. The book takes place 20 some years after Ship leaves the young people on their new planet--they now have children and their child...more

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Aug 24, 2012 Dashiel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Won from a Goodreads giveaway

This book could have been a lot better. The change of the point of view of the two main female protagonists wasn't very fluid; some parts of the book were just rather boring, and the book shouldn't have had as much unnecessary politics in it. There was a few too many characters in the book to all keep track of, and I found myself drawn to some characters over the others, because some were more life-like and felt more real for me.

However, I did enjoy reading the book,...more

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Dec 24, 2012 Barbara ~*Lindt Ninja*~ marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Just got this one from Tor - wonder if I need to read the first one? Looks like I will need to judging by the other reviews. :/

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Nov 06, 2011 Kathy Lane rated it 1 of 5 stars

http://thumbsupaward.blogspot.com/sea...

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Mar 29, 2013 Pilars Scott rated it 2 of 5 stars

Unsatisfying end :(

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Feb 14, 2013 Kevin rated it 2 of 5 stars

The long-awaited 2007 sequel to the 1983 novel Earthseed. Meh. It devolved into an odd drama that lacked a real protagonist.

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Oct 09, 2012 Foggygirl rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's the mark of an excellent story that immediately after reading the first book that I went out and bought the second book in order to keep reading. An excellent sequel and I am off to read the third book now.

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May 21, 2013 Kristen marked it as to-read

May 19, 2013 Lissy921 marked it as to-read

May 19, 2013 Pam Trefftzs marked it as to-read

May 11, 2013 Wesh marked it as to-read

May 07, 2013 Krissy rated it 3 of 5 stars

May 05, 2013 Lesley marked it as to-read

May 03, 2013 Baylor marked it as to-read

May 01, 2013 Marie rated it 5 of 5 stars

title link	preview: Farseed
avg rating	preview: Farseed Goodreads rating: 3.30 (79 ratings)
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Farseed (Seed #2)

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