Cheap Guardian (Book) (Joe W. Haldeman, Joe Haldeman) Price

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Customer Reviews of Guardian

Leave this one at the beach house
I have not read Joe Haldeman before and if this is an example I will definitely pass the next time someone offers me one of his books. Okay, I thought the book was science fiction. I was reading it expecting a life changing first contact novel. Instead, I got a travelogue of Americana circa 1890. The first part of the book was written like a travel journal but the only character is Rosa. We only experience what she experiences even though there are other characters in the story. We do not learn very much about them. We only see what Rosa shows us, which is usually scenery. It did not take long before I was bored out of my mind.

This book was very unsatisfying. Alas, the one redeeming quality about this novel is that it is short.

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Engrossing enough to prove hard to put down
Readers might anticipate a story of an encounter with alien powers from the description - and might be disappointed. In reality this is the story of Rosa, a woman who escapes an abusive husband and journeys across country with her child in post-Civil War days, to make a new life for herself. While the hints of encounters with a world-changing alien lie throughout the story line, it's only in the final third of the account that any science fiction elements shine through. Guardian is still engrossing enough to prove hard to put down, despite its lack of emphasis on the alien experience itself.

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Did Joe get bored and chang ethe story?
I picked up Guardian because of the unique historical and character pov. I really liked the first 85% of the book. It was interesting to follow the Rosa and her son as they moved west and then to Alaska in the late 1800's.
But every once in a while she would hint and something that would "change everything she knew" or "change the world". They always seemed to be tacked onto the end of the chapters.
Suddenly, the end of the book throws us a twist and takes us on a short field trip across the universe. A spirit guardian takes Rosa to visit a couple of planets and what is supposedly the afterlife.
Up until then, the book was pretty interesting. The whole raven/guardian and space theme seemed to be tacked on after Haldeman lost interest in writing the original story.
I wish the sci-fi aspect was more than the last couple of chapters. So much more could have been done with this story, but Joe just ends it. There is no climax, just a very boring alternative history wrap-up.
Was it historical fiction of a fascinating episode in our nation's history? Or the first book in a fascinating sci-fi series with an 19th century schoolmarm as the heroine? It seems to be neither. Which is too bad.