Rating: 
Summary: Interesting world along with some great characters
Review: I originally read this several years ago, but read it again after getting the new book in the series for Christmas. I enjoyed the book even more this time than I did the first.Card does a great job of creating a world that is very similar to our own from the same time period, but with some very important differences in how the world works and some tweaking to early American history. He populates this world with many interesting characters including some historical figures. The result is an incredibly compelling story which has many different levels. The massacre at Tippy-Canoe and the results are particularly well done. This book is better than the first in the series and leaves me eager to re-read the next one, Prentice Alvin. If you have read Seventh Son, you should definitely continue the series by reading this.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting world along with some great characters
Review: I originally read this several years ago, but read it again after getting the new book in the series for Christmas. I enjoyed the book even more this time than I did the first. Card does a great job of creating a world that is very similar to our own from the same time period, but with some very important differences in how the world works and some tweaking to early American history. He populates this world with many interesting characters including some historical figures. The result is an incredibly compelling story which has many different levels. The massacre at Tippy-Canoe and the results are particularly well done. This book is better than the first in the series and leaves me eager to re-read the next one, Prentice Alvin. If you have read Seventh Son, you should definitely continue the series by reading this.
Rating:
Summary: Wow!!!
Review: I picked this book thinking it would be hokey. It's an amazing book! One of the best books I remember reading in the last ten years. I need to get Number 1 in the series, now. It stands alone. Innovative!!! Genius!
Rating:
Summary: Wow!!!
Review: I picked this book thinking it would be hokey. It's an amazing book! One of the best books I remember reading in the last ten years. I need to get Number 1 in the series, now. It stands alone. Innovative!!! Genius!
Rating:
Summary: Flawless
Review: Orson Scott Card dazzles again with his second installment of "The Tales of Alvin Maker". "Red Prophet" is a powerful look into American history that might have been. There's not a dull moment to be found in this book. For anyone who loves the fantasy genre, I highly reccomend this book. It's a MUST READ for Card fans or anyone who's read the prequel "Seventh Son".
Rating: 
Summary: Reds, Whites, and Makers
Review: Orson Scott Card has created a captivating alternate world of colonial America: a world rich in magic, peril, and culture.
One of these cultures is the Reds, as Card calls the Indians. One of these Reds is a whisky-red named Lolla-Wossiky and he is under the tyrannical care of the white Governor Bill Harrison. Lolla-Wossiky manages to steal a keg of whisky, a necessary tool for his survival, and runs away. He searches for his dream beast, "All of life at first is a long sleep, a long dream. You fall asleep at the moment you are born, and never wake up, never wake up until finally one day the dream beast calls you" (Card 63). He finds the beast in a white boy named Alvin. Alvin is the seventh son of the seventh son, which we find out in the first book of the series, which is appropriately titled Seventh son.
With this order of birth come certain knacks, supernatural abilities, and attributes. Alvin is only eleven at the beginning of Red Prophet and is yet unaware of his powers, but Lolla-Wossiky finds him and is able to see his potential.
Lolla becomes Alvin's dream beast and teaches him a powerful lesson on the administration of his powers. Alvin, in turn, is able to be Lolla's dream beast and cures him of "the black noise". Lolla-Wossiky is then able to accept his destiny as a leader of Red men. "He would call the Reds together, teach them what he saw in his vision, and help them to be, not the strongest, but strong; not the largest but large; not the freest, but free" (Card 98). Lolla-Wossiky becomes the Red Prophet and his name changes to Tenskwa-tawa.
Alvin's life is in danger so his parents send him to Hatrack River to be a blacksmith's apprentice. On the road to his new life, Indians, who were hired by Harrison to torture white boys, stirring the whites against the Red Prophet's people, capture Measure and Alvin. Alvin uses his powers to keep them from harm but the Red Prophet senses their danger and sends his brother, Ta-Kumsaw, to save the boys' lives. Ta-Kumsaw takes the boys back with him to see his brother. Alvin and the Prophet are reunited and Alvin is taught and informed of his future. Alvin is then sent to accompany Ta-Kumsaw on his crusade against the white man. He learns to understand the ways of the land; he learns to understand the Red man. He is so in tune with the land and with the people that at the end of his journey with Red men Ta-Kumsaw tells him, "If all White men were true like you, Alvin, I would never have been their enemy" (Card 304). Red Prophet is dripping with Archetypes. Alvin is the young hero, the only one who can save the world from being unmade. As Joseph Campbell states in his book A Hero With a Thousand Faces, "the 'call to adventure'-signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown. This fateful region of both treasure and danger may be variously represented: as a distant land, a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delight" (Campbell 58). Alvin also goes into the belly of the whale when he goes with Ta-Kumsaw into the Red man's world, "The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died" (Campbell 90).
Alvin is helped in his journey by Taleswapper, a wanderer who trades stories with those he meets. Taleswapper is very wise and is able to help Alvin realize his destiny. A young girl named Peggy also aids him. He does not know of her existence or her role in his life, but she is always aware of him and keeping him safe. Card is not as opposed to allegory as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He openly states in his introduction his thanks to "my great-great-grandfather Joseph for the stories behind the story in this book." He is speaking of Joseph Smith. The similarities in the lives of Alvin and Joseph are prominent in the novel: Alvin is Joseph Smith's brother's name, Joseph hurt his leg the same age as Alvin, Measure and Hyrum Smith share many similarities. Yet, as author Michael Collings says, you do not have to be a Mormon to understand the book, "Card is not a 'Mormon' writer. He is a writer who is a Mormon. . . He never sets out to preach, to proselytize, to convince" The fantasy themes in Red Prophet are subtle. It almost seems that Red Prophet is a historical novel but for the knacks, charms, hexes, and beseechings that really work. They use their knacks to build, to protect, and to heal. There are special knacks that only certain people possess: a spark can start fires with their minds; a torch, which is Peggy's knack, can see people's heartfires, and the rarest is a maker, the last maker was Jesus Christ and the next is Alvin. Colonial America never seemed so captivating as in Orson Scott Card's alternate world of the Red Prophet.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Red Prophet is an wonderful book. It is much better then Seventh Son, and much more fullfilling. Card has a highly developed story in this book. Read it.
Rating:
Summary: Height of The Tales of Alvin Maker so far, wonderfully epic
Review: RED PROPHET is the second book of Orson Scott Card's "Tales of Alvin Maker" and perhaps the best book in the series (out of the five released so far). It has unforgettable events, an epic sweep, and gives a sobering reminder of how white settlers wiped out the Native Americans. For the first forty pages the reader is introduced to the world outside of the frontier town of Vigor Church, where most of the first book SEVENTH SON was set. There is a glimpse at the French Canadians in this alternate history, and the black heart of one William Henry Harrison, who in our world became president after his slaughter of the Indians at Tippecanoe. The novel's main plotline then begins with Alvin's setting out from Vigor Church to Hatrack River, the place of his tumultuous birth and where he now will become an apprentice smith. He is accompanied by his brother Measure and it isn't long before they are captured by Choc-Taw hired by Harrison to smear the reputation of the Red prophet Tenskwa-Tawa (formerly Lolla-Wossiky) and his brother Ta-Kumsaw. Alvin and Measure survive their capture and are rescued by Ta-Kumsaw. Then, on the shores of Lake Mizogan, Alvin begins to learn of his destiny as a Maker and the incredible city which he must build. And this is only the beginning. RED PROPHET takes us over a wide array of places and shows us incredible characters and sweep of history. There is so much here that stays with the reader long after the novel ends, such as the anger of the townsmen at Tippecanoe, Alvin's travels all over this wide land, Eight-Face Mound, and Becky's mystical loom. Card has triumphed in creating such an enchanting novel. While The Tales of Alvin Maker isn't of the highest quality in terms of prose, I'd certainly recommend this series, especially because RED PROPHET is part of it. This installment is not only captivating, but it also spurs one to read more about this era of American history, when settlers and Native Americans violently clashed.
Rating: 
Summary: A step down from the first book.
Review: The first novel in this series swept me away with a captivating world of what might have been. This novel returns to that world and proceeds to get really lost. This story is a very heavy handed look at the abuse that immigrants gave to the native americans. While events very much like the events in this book actually happened, and often in ways just as cold if not colder than what this book showed, this does not excuse the way that these events are shown. Not that this book is really bad, it just doesn't have any urgency to it. This book reminded me of the movie "The Green mile", in that it had the same setimentalism that to me seemed contrived. There are plenty of stories to be told on this subject, but this one just had to urgency and oddly for Card a weak sense of character. Card as always has very good characters, but many of their actions seemed forced. Many of the characters where given to the readers as reluctant fighters, but I just wasn't convinced. I will still read the next book in the series to see if Card recovered, but this is not a sequal up to the quality of the seventh son.
Rating:
Summary: captivating
Review: The second book in the Alvin Maker series is darker than the first but just as thought provoking. Card takes American history and changes it just enough for the reader to wonder what might have been. The entire series is addictive.
| 
