Children of the Mind

While this isn't the official ending of the Ender saga, I think it serves as a pretty reasonable practical ending.

A couple of years ago, I re-read Ender's Game followed by Speaker for the Dead and then right on to Xenocide, all of which were pretty fantastic. I originally started CotM at that time, but just couldn't get into it, making it about 20% of the way in before setting it aside. This time I got the audiobook (first Ender book I've listened in audio format) and I think that really helped. TBH, I also “cheated” and read the summary on wikipedia. In the previous novels, Peter was always a very hated character for me, so him being featured prominently (though not really!) is what I think kept me from getting into it previously. That's where the summary helped me conceptually, because I was better oriented to what was going on.

That said, this is a pretty good story that resolves the main story line that occurs starting in SftD and continues in Xenocide, ending that book in something of a cliff-hanger

-At the end of Xenocide, the Starways Congress has decided the Descolada virus is such a threat to all of humanity that even quarantine isn't sufficient to mitigate the risk, so they order the star fleet to destroy the planet with the Mini-Doctor device. Simultaneously, they have discovered the existence of Jane and see her not as another sentient species, but as a malicious virus/threat infecting their systems, so they secretly enact a plan to shut down the ansible network upon which she exists as her neural network.This book covers:a. How the xenobiologists on Lusitania create an antidote to the descolada virus, which involves extreme manipulation of space/timeb. That has a side effect of allowing instantaneous interstellar travelc. It has another side effect that ends up in Ender being split into 3 bodies and a few other side effects as well.d. There are several missions relating to 2 major objectives: getting Starways Congress to rescind their order; finding habitable planets to evacuate the species and residents of Lusitaniae. Finally, there's a little side-shoot discussing how Jane might be saved.Personally, I felt it was a satisfying conclusion to this series. I don't feel a great desire to get into the 5th book and reviews on that one aren't stellar (pun-intended). However, I enjoy the series well enough to look into Bean's "Shadow" series, so that will likely be tackled before too long. I understand the 2 series "come together" in the 5th book, so maybe I'll tackle it then.

Enjoyed this “wrap up” of the story.

I thought it was better than the previous book in the series (Xenocide), but this book was nothing special.