Orson Scott Card has a new hardback on bookshelves. Treasure Box, an "urban horror" novel published by HarperCollins, showed up a month early - probably due to the fact that TOR will publish Children of the Mind in hardback late in July. The ISBN is 0-06-017654-7 and the cover charge is $24 for 310 pages of suspense. Actually, the suspense fills somewhat less than 310 pages, but who's counting. The dust jacket is silvery-blue with embossed lettering and a simplistically drawn, partially opened box under a very large "Orson Scott Card" with the words "Treasure Box" in much smaller print below the image of the box.

I began reading the book right away and experienced some difficulty putting the book down once I got past the first couple chapters. Sometime around 3am this morning I finished it. :-) The only break in reading longer than a couple minutes once the kids were off to bed was from 9:30 to 10:30 when I was chatting on AOL at the weekly Hatrack River town meeting (in character). Speaking of "urban horror" you should have seen Lady Hampton - now that was horrific! :-)

As an aside, Waldenbooks, where I bought my copy, only had two in stock. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the entire order they got from HarperCollins. Both were shelved alphabetically in the "New Fiction" section rather than in one of three or four areas set aside for the books they are "featuring" (or "selling", I suppose). My guess is HarperCollins is spending extremely little to advertise this new book. They must not have a lot of faith in Card's selling power.

Card recently changed his rather liberal pre-published book policy - as you can see from the notice on his official web site (http://www.hatrack.com/). He had only recently put Children of the Mind up there for free downloading in a similar fashion to what he has done in the past on AOL. COTM has now been removed and complete novels will never appear on the web page due to publisher's concerns about best seller lists. The theory is that if you have an electronic copy of a book you will not rush out and buy the hardback within the first couple weeks after it comes out. HarperCollins won't allow any electronic transfer of manuscripts that they purchase so Card is unable to give his fans an advance look at novels that they publish.

Having done my part to push Treasure Box to the top of the NYT BS list let me just give a brief "appreciation" of the book.

Quentin Fears (pronounced Fierce) is a wealthy recluse still grieving for the loss of an older sister (Lizzy) in a tragic childhood accident. He made his money working for an unnamed software company in Washington state. Now he travels around the country helping people fulfill their dreams. In DC he meets the "perfect woman" and after a week and a half he proposes to her. She is his first true love - and he comes to love her more than the memory of his sister. Following a brief and blissful engagement - and a bizzare brush with pre-marital intimacy - they marry and begin to live happily ever after. But things are not always what they seem - it seems. :-)

In the end Quentin tangles with ghosts, witches, beasts, and brats. Overall I think Card does an admirable job weaving the storyline without giving away the secrets too early. Unlike Lost Boys, this story isn't "Mormon"in any significant way. And it isn't a sad or sentimental story either. TB isn't horrific. It's gripping at times and generally spooky once it gets going. Reading much of it after midnight probably helped. :-) It certainly held my interest, but the end result was "interesting" and "very good" rather than "Powerful" and "Spectacular". I expect a re-read will point out all the poignancy I missed at 2 o'clock in the morning. Card is writing about power and the treasure box in TB contains a powerfully evil force. His closing paragraph seems to suggest that the ultimate "power" contained in a very different "treasure box" is the power to create new life.

John Hansen