I enjoyed this one, but I found that I couldn't really connect to any of the characters but it was a fun read

This one struck me as rather odd, though I think it was intentionally so. The characters are certainly isolated from their peers. This means that we don't really connect with them. They're too different, too outside. And because they don't really make connections with their world neither do we. It was inconsistent as well, sometimes trying for humor and others entirely serious and looking for meaning. There are random diversions that go nowhere. And characters are not consistent in their presentation.The base concept is interesting but it doesn't live up to it's promise.

This book is light fare for non-discriminating YA fans. It is a fast read with snark, murder, kidnapping, adulting issues, and a few church-like "lessons." It was not the quality of storytelling that we've come to expect from Card, and it is sad to see him writing for a throwaway market.

The book Lost and Found tells the story of a boy named Ezekiel who has the "micropower" of being able to find lost items, determine who they belong to, and attempt to return them. Ezekiel becomes friends with a girl named Beth, who both cares about him as a person and helps him develop his micropower. Ezekiel also learns to use his powers to help a detective find missing persons. Overall, this book was fine. My favorite part about the book was Ezekiel's relationship with his father. However, in general I thought the book was largely quick to read but forgettable.

‏I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so I could give an honest review.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite books. Being offered the opportunity to read his latest, Lost and Found, is an honor and privilege. I know I am supposed to be unbiased when doing reviews but it was difficult in this case.

Lost and Found is not long, less than 300 pages, and flows wells so it is a quick read. In it, we are introduced to Ezekiel Blast who has a gift for finding lost items. He feels compelled to return his finds. Instead of being thanked, people accuse him of taking the items in the first place. He is friendless and an outcast until a girl walks up to him and asks "Are you really a thief?

This story is charming and engaging. The well-developed characters are endearing. It is being marketed as SciFi and Fantasy as well as Teen and Young Adult. I agree it is a Teen/YA book but, if anything, it is light SciFi and Fantasy. People who do not usually read SciFi and Fantasy will enjoy this story.

I believe I gave an unbiased opinion on this story especially since it is not a typical SciFi and Fantasy book.

This 200-word review was published on Philomathinphila.com on 1/27/20.

As much as I loved the concept of this, I had a hard time getting through it. Around 10% of the way through I went to look through some spoiler-free reviews to hopefully spark some more excitement to continue with it, but along with reviews I found out that the author is deeply homophobic. After doing further research about the author's homophobic comments, I absolutely do not want to continue reading his book.

Fast paced read that seems to be targeted towards older teenagers with the dark and sensitive topics. This book deals with teen powers and basically trying to figure your sh*t out as a teenager. I love Orson Scott Card and was very excited to read another book by this well known author. Lost and Found did not disappoint!

This was an okay read. I did enjoy it through I found myself unable to connect to the characters as much as I would have liked. I would however, recommend this to the younger audience of YA.

Thank you to Blackstone publishing for providing me with a copy of this book.

This is my first orson Scott book and I rather liked it. I found it very readable and humane but ... Ifeel conflicted. I did find some reveals a bit predictable and the banter, whoch I usually always like, was a bit too much. Also, the books sometimes felt middle grade.

I am curious to know what the younguer audience thinks.

Ezekiel isn't a superhero, but he does have this ability--it usually gets him in trouble, and makes him seem odd, so he tries to keep it to himself. It's just a micro-power, seemingly insignificant. He can find things, little things like toys or hair scrunchies; things that are lost. And he returns them. But how do you explain something you don't understand yourself? People think he's a thief, or a stalker.

Then a girl goes missing. Can Ezekiel's micro-power find a person that is lost? Detective Shank thinks so.

I was a little unsure about how this scenario would be set up and played out. No, Ezekiel is NOT a psychic; he does NOT seek supernatural/demonic revelations to guide him. This would not be something I would read or promote to other readers.

Like a superhero, Ezekiel is just a fourteen year old boy who has a power that sets him apart, and may save the world...his world, at least.

I have only ever read Ender's Game by this author before taking up this book. I didn't make it all the way through that one. But this one was better--it does drag for a bit at the beginning, but there is also an engaging banter, wit, and sarcasm as well as eye-opening wisdom and bold insight that draws you in.

Ezekiel is being raised by his father after his mother's tragic death. I love seeing this father/son relationship, and how they are trying to navigate their way through unending grief and loss, and live their lives the best way they can.

Ezekiel's friend, Beth, is spunky and somewhat strange, but very likable, as is Ezekiel.

There is some mild language. And I would not consider this a read for young or sensitive readers. Triggers would include: the dark world of child-kidnapping as well as murder (more talked about than seen).

Other than this, and some mildly mature discussions about a person's anatomy, this was an intriguing and fascinating read, and I really enjoyed it.

I received an ARC copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Lost And Found

A story about a 14 year old who has the micropower to find lost things. Ezekiel Bliss has only one friend his father because all other kids shun him because of his popularity as a thief. What is difficult to explain is his micropower to find lost things and when he returns those things to the owners, he is targeted as the probable thief. So when he meets Beth, a 14 year old who looks 7 and is cruelly bullied because of that, they can't help but be friends.
Beth helps Ezekiel find more about his micropower(basically a simple weird ability which doesn't help much) so does the new group of micropotents (who each have micropowers of their own) and so does Lt Shank, an undercover FBI agent who enlists Ezekiel to help find a small girl who was kidnapped from her house.
It was pretty good.. The story was anecdotal without getting boring. The writing was funny, so was the dialogues. The characters were lovable and relatable. What made me stop with 3.5 stars is that fact that the story was so thin. Some decisions didn't make sense. And even though it didn't change the story much, it felt kinda disorientating.
All in all, a quirky intriguing story that I enjoyed a lot.

Absolutely brilliant, Card at his finest

Arguably the best book that Orson Scott Card has ever written; he’s at his absolute best here. I've always been a sucker for re-reading Ender's Game, but Lost and Found is my new re-readable Card favorite. Absolutely brilliant characterization and world-building.

I love the whole idea of micropowers, but that’s not what’s really shining here… It’s the relationships and the characters. The mysteries take second place as the heart of the story will capture your heart. Its moments stolen from the human condition and our collective experience, wrapped up with healing wisdom.

This is not a lighthearted read; while this feels like a YA, it’s similar to Ender’s Game with its dark, dark moments and terrifying glimpses into the pain of adolescence.

Heads-up for triggering: violence against children, kidnapping, and predation.

I enjoyed this one, but I found that I couldn't really connect to any of the characters but it was a fun read

It hurts my soul to give an Orson Scott Card book only three stars. I liked it. I didn't LOVE it. Card has his usual knack for characters in very interesting situations. It's what drew me to this book in the first place - micropowers. I even found Ezekiel and his friends endearing - almost like a John Green novel (whose characters I have always loved or hated). However, I was missing the POWER behind this novel. Perhaps I was spoiled with Card's other books.
I think this would be a great novel for a student who is interested in the topic and a light read.

Fourteen-year-old Ezekiel has a special power. Not a superpower; though, just a small power: he’s drawn to lost items — hair scrunchies, toys, and even bikes — combined with the innate knowledge of who the owners are and where to go to return the items, and a strong compulsion to return them. Unfortunately, this hasn’t worked out so well for Ezekiel: everyone thinks he stole the things and returned them for the attention or a reward. He’s got quite a file with the police by the time he’s a teenager, and that, combined with his mother’s tragic death when he was four, has made Ezekiel an embittered social pariah. Ezekiel’s actual last name is Bliss, but in his own mind he calls himself Ezekiel Blast.

So when Beth, a tiny classmate with proportionate dwarfism, insists on joining him on his lonely walk to and from school, he actively tries to discourage her overtures of friendship. And when a detective begs him to try to use his talent to find a missing six-year-old girl, Ezekiel does his best to shut that down too. In any case, as he explains to Detective Shank, his power doesn’t work on anything living. But sometimes it’s not so easy to say no, either to friendship or an urgent request for help. With Beth’s and others’ help, Ezekiel starts to explore ways to expand the usefulness of his micropower … an exploration that’s kicked into higher gear when another terrible event occurs.

In Lost and Found, Orson Scott Card begins with a superpowered teenager and a mystery, a common enough theme, but approaches it from a different direction and with unusual thoughtfulness for the genre. Card’s works frequently feature an intelligent person with unusual talents who is having trouble fitting into society (and typically that’s society’s problem, not the individual’s). As a result, the dialogue is sharp and witty, if a little unrealistic.

“Now I am an efflorescent adolescent.”
Beth whooped in delight. “Efflorescent adolescent,” she repeated. Then her lips moved as she subvocalized it several times. “Such a cool euphemism for acne.”
“So you have to move your lips to memorize.”
“Memory is more about sound than sight, and more about kinetics than optics,” said Beth.

I’m not sure who really speaks like that, especially if they’re fourteen, but it does make for interesting reading. Ezekiel, in his justifiable bitterness, goes overboard with his snark and even some quite rude name-calling. But the heartening part is that he has people around him who are willing to dig past his surliness to find the lonely person within who needs their care and understanding. This novel makes several worthwhile points about values like trust, friendship and love.

“I’m really sorry. I was so focused on that lost girl, and I only just now got it that we lost you a long time ago.”

Too many young adult novels have parents and other adults who are either absent or oblivious, but Ezekiel’s father (a butcher, not a doctor or lawyer) is actively involved in Ezekiel’s life, communicates with him in a meaningful way, and actually joins Ezekiel and helps when events reach their crisis point. It’s almost stunning. This sensitivity and attention to interpersonal relationships and characters’ deeper motivations are another distinguishing point in Card’s works, and I generally come away feeling enriched. Lost and Found is a much different story than Ender's Game or Speaker for the Dead (still my favorite OSC novel), but you can tell they’re by the same author, and all are thought-provoking science fiction.

Content notes: Though Lost and Found has a pair of young teens as its main characters, it’s written on an older level and there are disturbing elements to the plot. Detective Shank tells Ezekiel, fairly early on, that young girls are being kidnapped by guys for child pornography and snuff film purposes, and that plays out in the plot. The punches are pulled to some extent, since this is a YA novel, but it’s not for very young or sensitive readers.

Sometimes even authors we like disappoint us. Ender’s Game is still close to the top of my list of favorite scifi books. I re-read it several times since I discovered it in my tender teens and had my mind blown away. So to say that I was excited to get my hands on this new book by Orson Scott Card is an understatement. I couldn’t wait to read it! I dove into it as soon as I got it! And… I don’t know… I guess I am not the right audience for his YA books.

I mean the story itself had potential. Kids with micropowers and being ostracized because of them? Excellent. A support group that lets them explore those powers and find useful applications for them or at least to come to terms with having them? Very good. A commentary on friendship and the concept of found family? I’m along for the ride. Add to it a missing person case and cooperation with the police, and this sounded like the perfect book.

Unfortunately, even though these sounded like great individual elements, the mixture turned out to be rather underwhelming. Even though the book is very well written and easy to read, I had several problems with the story.

First of all, the incessant banter between the characters. For a solitary kid, Ezekiel sure talks a lot. While some of it was fun and relevant to the story, but most of it is just that… banter that has nothing to do with the story itself and just fills page after page with words. I think the author wanted to show us how his protagonist thinks and feels by making him talk about irrelevant stuff, but to me it was mostly a snooze fest. I found myself skipping pages upon pages of dialogues that could have been cut without loosing any story at all.

My second problem is with Ezekiel himself. Some of his actions, especially towards the end of the book, make no sense. He is almost 17, not 12. He is painted to be a thoughtful and smart kid… yet he chooses to ditch a cop, who is armed and trained to take down criminals, and go rescue his friend with his dad instead who is… a butcher and doesn’t even own a gun. And that after he HEARD at least 2 criminals being at the place his friend is held at. Two unarmed civilians against criminals who are known to torture and kill their victims. Right. What can go wrong?

And deriving from that second frustration is my next one – there are no consequences to this stupidest move of the century. This whole rescue and taking down of the villains goes way too easily and bloodlessly. The resolution isn’t on par with the stakes. At no point during the book did I feel a real sense of danger or worry for the characters. I understand that this is YA, but the author describes serious crimes here: sex trafficking, kidnapping, murder, etc. Yet the language is so sanitized that it doesn’t grip you. The incessant dialogues about nothing inter-spaced in the story might also be at fault.

Finally, I found that apart from Ezekiel, his dad, and his friend, none of the other characters were particularly developed. The micropower support group kids had no personality beyond their individual powers. Heck, I can’t even remember their names. The cop was… a cop who really wanted to save that little girl and was willing to use unconventional methods to do it. Other than that, he is a blank page. And the school counselor? Why was she even in the story to begin with?

So in the end, this book was a disappointment. The brew didn’t turn out quite like I had expected. Maybe because of the addition of too many different ingredients. I think I might go re-read Ender’s Game.

PS: I received and advanced copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A marvelous idea! micropowers are real I believe, we all have them, some are more incredible that others, I for instance believe to have the micropower to fix computer related issues by just standing there, much like mechanics when you take your car for repair as soon as you get there the problem disappears for some reason.
I'm not going to ruin the plot but the main character has an amazing micropower and we see him learning to use it to do something great.
However in the end it feels like a lot was missing, I'm not sure if there are sequels plan to make it better but in general my problem was that the writing sometimes felt too childish but the characters are more teenagers than kids.
You feel it was written almost for little children when you read on almost every sentence the name of the character.
So the idea was great but the execution wasn't

I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

Ezekiel Blast’s classmates all believe he is a thief. He isn’t; he just has a micropower of finding lost things. Ezekiel used to return the lost things to their owners, but everyone believed that he must have stolen the items, or else why would he have them and know who to return them to? Ezekiel has no friends until the beginning of his freshman year of high school, when 13-year-old Beth insists on becoming his friend. Often picked on because she looks like a 7-year-old, Beth figures if she stays within Ezekiel’s “shunning bubble,” the bullies will leave her alone. At first, Ezekiel doesn’t want a friend, but Beth insists, and before he knows it, Ezekiel is looking forward to seeing Beth each day. When Beth learns about Ezekiel’s micropower, she convinces him to learn as much as he can about it. When a girl in his town goes missing, Ezekiel has to test his power as he never has before.

The micropowers in the story really intrigued me. I liked the characters of Ezekiel and Beth, although I'm not sure how much they really sounded like teenagers. I did think early in the book that Ezekiel might be on the spectrum, but that was never confirmed. This book covers a lot of heavy topics, such as death of a parent, kidnapping, rape, child pornography, and murder; I am not sure how suitable it would be for younger readers, though the rest of the book seems more geared toward a younger audience. Overall, the book was a bit uneven for me. I enjoyed most of it, but some parts dragged.

I don’t even know where to start with this one… this book crept up on me and will probably stick with me for the rest of my life. There is such intense emotions at play here that it caught me off guard. Lost And Found is phenomenal.

It all starts with the unlikely friendship of Ezekiel and Beth, and I think a quote from Ezekiel best sums it up. He says,

Beth Sorenson, I’m the thief you chose to walk to school with. And you’re the proportionate dwarf that I choose to walk to school with.

Ezekiel is 14 and has what they call in the book a “micropower”. Ezekiel has the unique ability to be able to return lost items to their owners. This has gotten him in a lot of trouble in the past because people tend to think he has stolen the object he is returning. Ezekiel is kind of forced into this friendship with Beth, who as previously mentioned is a proportionate dwarf, because she knows that if she stands within his “shunning bubble” and walks with him to “Downy Soft” High School no one will be able to pick on her. Beth helps Ezekiel to expand his “micropower” by helping him discover what he is capable of. Through his discoveries about his power he embarks on a journey to find a missing little girl and uncover a human trafficking ring with the help of a slightly overbearing detective named Shank.

I’ll be honest this book took me a while and it really won me over when Ezekiel made a reference to The Lord of The Rings. Silly, I know. But this movie is about far more than a kid with a silly power, it about loss and growth. Ezekiel loses his mother when he is a young boy. He watches her get hit by a car and she dies in the hospital. Ezekiel is kind of a jerk because of a lot of deeply ingrained hurt. From his trouble with the cops to his sadness about his mother he is a hurt 14 year old boy. His father describes his hurt like this,

Your body showed no injury that the doctors could treat, but I knew it was there, I knew that it shattered you, you were maimed, you were crippled that day, and there was nothing I could do, I couldn’t replace her, I couldn’t change my whole character and become that vibrant, happy, loving, chattering, kind and generous person in whose circle of light you had spent your entire life.

So through this hurt we understand why Ezekiel is the way he is. But he does not stay his guarded smart ass self all through the novel. The character grows in a way that made me, as a reader, really fond of him. He starts off as almost an anti-hero and by the end he is a no strings attached hero through and through. Card wrote Ezekiel masterfully.

On top of the meaningfulness of the characters there is a great sense of humor. The characters are witty and smart. Sometimes they come off as a little over the top smart but I think it works because you are supposed to realize that Ezekiel and Beth aren’t normal kids. They are special. My favorite quote from Beth is this,

I don’t make up words,” said Beth. “I coin them when I need them, and then they’re real.

Each character has their quirks. Ezekiel is kind of a jerk but really a softie on the inside, and Beth is a quick witted girl who always knows the right thing to say.

The one thing about this story that was a little irritating to me was the dad, and I think it had more to do with the way his personality was written than anything. He is an extremely intelligent man but is ridiculously baffled by a smart phone. I understand that this is to illustrate that he isn’t very wealthy and that he is old-school, but this man has to be in his forties and literally has zero knowledge about electronics. It’s unbelievable and it proves to be an obstacle in a tense situation. I guess my point is that I grew up in a town with a lot of poverty and 99% of 40 year olds that I know can operate a smart phone. The writing wasn’t convincing. Plus the dad also has this to say about Ezekiel trick or treating,

“Totally your call,” said Dad. “Till you’re sixteen, and then it’s just disgusting to go begging for candy.

I don’t know I guess that idea rubbed me the wrong way because I’d rather a 16 year old be out trick or treating than causing trouble.

But with problematic dads aside this book is about coping and there is an analogy that Beth uses that perfectly sums up grief and the grieving process. It really hit me in the heart and gave me a deeper understanding of he underlying issues. She says,

Look, Ezekiel Blast, the past is like gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe. When bad stuff first happens, it’s like when the gum is sticking to everything—the road, the sidewalk. And you can’t wear that shoe into the house because it will get all involved in the carpet and the bathroom rug, but when you try to scrape it off on the edge of the sidewalk or the edge of the porch, or you try to rub it off in the grass, it won’t come off. So you have to just live with it. You walk along, your foot trying to stick with every step, but gradually as the gum gets dirtier and dries out more and more, it loses its stickiness. And eventually, without ever actually removing it, you forget the gum is there. Except maybe on a hot day the gum gets soft and a little sticky again, and you think, Oh, yeah, gum on my shoe.

I thought this was so beautifully worded and it is so easy to digest. Everyone knows what it is like to have gum stuck to the bottom of their shoes. Everyone knows what hurt feels like and for Orson Scott Card to put it together so nicely really impressed me.

This book also has a lot to say about people as individuals. The insinuation can be made that everyone has some kind of “micropower”, I won’t spoil some of the others for you because I think they add to the story. I felt Orson Scott Card was saying that everyone is special, everyone is unique, and everyone is useful in their own way. The message is beautiful and Ezekiel’s power proves to be way bigger and way more useful than he could ever imagine. Even the “dumbest” of powers prove to be valuable in the right situation.

I’m going to use one more quote from Beth, she says to Ezekiel,

You said no person is ever really lost because you always know how to find yourself, because you’re always right there.

I think this rings true for more than just Ezekiel’s power. If you ever feel lost remember that you aren’t because you know where you are and that is where you are supposed to be at the time. Ezekiel can only find lost things, but a person is never really lost just in a different space than where they wish to be. It felt good to read those words and apply them to my life, and I believe that is what Orson Scott Card intended.

It was hard for me to rate this one because for a long time I didn’t know what to say. Now that it is all written down and I see how many quotes I pulled from the text I think it would be dishonest to give it anything less than 5 stars. So 5/5, this book was a real treat and a surprise.

Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for allowing me access to this title.

Lost and Found is a young adult novel by Orson Scott Card. Released 10th Sept 2019 from Blackstone, it's 281 pages and available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats.

This is a difficult novel to review. There are elements of mystery thriller, YA themes of isolation, angst, snarky teens vs. the world, magic realism, coming of age novel, etc. On the other hand, there is some -very- dark content here that I'm not entirely comfortable finding in YA (especially teen/tween) writing. These include sexual abuse, kidnapping, murder, torture, pedophilia, bullying, abandonment, etc. On the other other hand, the target audience is exposed to these themes (and worse) every day and I don't think anyone is shielded anymore, despite what we try to do as parents.

Technically, I found some parts of the dialogue format tiring to decipher. There were many (not all) interactions where all of the characters' dialogue was relegated to one continuous paragraph, whimsically interspersed with commas and quotation marks, and lacking attributions. The unrelenting biting sarcasm (including the adults) wore me down. I didn't find many of the characters truly sympathetic or particularly likable.

The pacing was odd, the first half of the novel seemed to drag for me. The dialogue was also oddly paced and aiming for biting sarcasm 80% of the time, seemed to miss a lot. The denouement felt rushed after 250 pages of build-up, and then drug out for another 3 chapters. There were foreshadowings that this was not a standalone novel since there are hints of future reveals and exploration of characters' micropowers.

On the positive side, OSC is a capable and experienced writer and could likely plot and write a novel in his sleep. I just wish this one didn't read as if he had plotted and written it in his sleep. So much of this book felt like a sporadic and half-hearted effort.

Final assessment: good (possibly great) author, readable and entertaining book, weirdly plotted and paced, full of moderately annoying characters, really intriguing premise, broke my suspension of disbelief and yanked me out of the story on multiple occasions. Three and a half stars.