Warning: The characters in Pathfinder uncover the plot of the novel in their own time. I see no viable way to write about it without revealing a wee bit about the nature of the novel. I'm not containing any spoilers per se, but if you (like me) avoid reading the back of the book because it reveals too much, you should skip this review.

Orson Scott Card is a master of using science fiction to examine the nature of humanity. His stories tend to be character-driven, yet set in a science fiction world in order to force them to make choices that would otherwise be impossible. Pathfinder diverges from Card's usual formula.

Pathfinder is about a group of people with extraordinary abilities - mostly dealing with the manipulation of time. Card takes a different approach than most sci-fi writers who deal with time travel. Unfortunately, sometimes he gets so excited about this that his characters sit around discussing how time travel works ad nauseum - often breaking the flow of the story in the process. Card seems to think that his approach is incredibly clever, and his writing sometimes reflects this attitude.

Card doesn't reveal the entire plot until the acknowledgments at the end of the book - he leaves it up to the reader to decipher what is going on. Personally, I loved having to piece together events eleven-thousand years in the past with those in the present, and I found that the technique worked well. However, I believe that those who identify themselves as anything other than hard-score sci-fi fans will find the effort difficult, or perhaps impossible. Additionally, it is not a novel for those who don't want to think - deductive skills are required every step of the way. I won't be giving this one to my eight-year-old.

All-in-all, I enjoyed Pathfinder, but not nearly as much as some of Card's other books. The middle of the book feels a bit bogged down and doesn't flow well in the story, but an excellent ending makes up for it.