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Earthborn is the fifth and final installment of the five book series called Homecoming. The series is originally set on the planet Harmony, inhabited by humans descended from people who fled a ruined Earth a long time ago. Harmony's inhabitants are monitored by an orbiting satellite called the Oversoul. Somehow, all the people of Harmony are genetically altered so that the Oversoul can speak to their minds and influence their thoughts and actions.

This system was set up by those who fled Earth so that the Oversoul could maintain peace on the planet. It was able to prevent the invention of certain technologies which led to weaponry, etc., which ultimately led to the downfall of Earth. Well, when the series starts the Oversoul is getting old and worn down and it is losing its ability to perform its duties so it recruited a group of humans to trek to the hidden spaceport and return to Earth to get an updated software upload from the Keeper of the Earth which is the planet's central intelligence and which presumably spawned the Oversoul.

In book four, the humans arrive on Earth to find two other sentient species living there which have replaced them and things go predictably bad, and factions are made and fights are fought. Read my previous review for a summary of that book.

Fast forward hundreds of years later to when Earthborn is set. The human decedents from Harmony have assimilated with the other two species of intelligent life, flourished and established states, and (surprise) are still not getting along with themselves. One of the surviving humans from Harmony survives in their orbiting starship Basilica - she is kept in suspended animation but woken on occasion by the Oversoul to monitor the goings-on on Earth.

In all this time the Oversoul has not found the Keeper of the Earth. The Keeper seems to influence the dreams of some of the humans but that's about it. It didn't take long for this novel to start to feel like the rubbish supernatural and spiritual dreck one would find in our "holy" books. Omnipotent hidden god influencing its primitive subjects through dreams - sounds familiar. UGH. I'm aware that Card patterned this series after the Mormon story so I should not have been surprised when the science fiction was overpowered by its religious tone.

I thought Earthborn and the whole Homecoming series concluded in a very unsatisfying way. The issues brought up in the early novels concerning the decay of control of Harmony's citizens and the Oversoul's future were long cast by the wayside in order to tell the story of the nebulous Keeper and it's religious-hungry inhabitants. And this novel dragged for me. It was slog. I was bored. But I had to know how this series was going to end so I finished.

I rated other four novels three stars as I enjoyed them just enough to keep reading. I really didn't like this novel at all. What a way to start the new year.