Chapter by Chapter

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.