Xenocide

Best book of the series.

After reading Speaker for the Dead, I thought this book would be just as captivating. It was not. It just went on for too long and over analyzed everything. I just kept waiting for the point in the book where it would take me in. The story was pulled in so many different directions that each part wasn’t given the attention it deserved. Interesting ethical debates are still apart of this book but it not enough.

Characters I had cared about before, I didn’t fee that same connection with. The emotional pull of the previous book was missing from this one. Most were unlikable and I don’t feel like that was intentional. Bad characters with no emotional gravity are what hurt the book.

I was pretty disappointed about this book. The first two were fun and interesting, and I really liked getting to know the characters. But in this book, I felt like the whole thing was just different characters giving long preachy philosophical statements, which weren't even interesting. The amount of plot movement could have been fit on 30 pages. Just not great.
Plus, who writes 60-page chapters? That's messed up.

Age range: 16+
Confusing, boring, definitely need to be older to subject yourself to this.

3.5 stars

What a weird experience to re-read. I last looked at Xenocide when I was in my early teens, and it's cool to see just how much it shaped the person I am today. There are lots of really good ideas in this book, but it's weighed down by all that /literature/ stuff. Like, having too many characters without anything to do. Ender has six kids and a wife from the last book, but only two children have anything to do here. The others are shoehorned in, and get into some arguments for the sake of Drama, but without any payoff to the actual story.

Ender's wife gets jealous and throws a hissy fit. But it doesn't matter, and it feels like Card remembered she was around and should probably do something. Thankfully she joins a nunnery and we don't hear from her again, which is delightful because she's a tedious, unlikable character.

There's a ton of this. Plikt is set up as this MYSTERY WOMAN who idolizes Ender from afar. But Card forgets about her, and she does nothing. We get a whole chapter introducing Valentine's husband only for him to wordlessly drive the car later while the real protagonists do things. She brings five kids along, but they are never mentioned again.

And the convenience of the thing! The Enderverse is dripping with Star Wars-style creative-bankruptcy. Ender not only happens to be the guy who saves the human race, he turns out to be a brilliant author and orator and diplomat and detective. He writes and pushes through the first inter-species treaty. And he carries around the only existing egg of a extinct alien civilization. And an intergalactic AI lives inside of him.

His sister is the best op-ed writer in the universe. His brother singlehandedly united humanity and governed it until the end of his life. OK fine maybe it's a particularly bright family. Sure.

But then he travels 3000 years into the future and marries a woman whose parents genetically engineered a cure for the virus that allows for all life on the planet. She was probably pretty smart in the last book but I don't remember what she did. But her baby daddy figures out all of the only known-living alien culture. Of their children, in order of descending age:

1. discovers deep biological secrets about the aliens; is later the target of a genuine, physics-defying miracle
2. designs a vaccine to a virus that saves all of humanity in the universe; also gets rid of the false gods
3. (we are told) is a great religious hero, who dies a martyr and is subsequently beatified.
4. has metal eyes and (we are told) is the greatest father imaginable
5. commits TREASON because she is mad at her mom
6. intentionally leads a pogrom to massacre the aliens. also invents faster-than-light travel.

Like what the fuck. The city they live in has over a thousand people, and the only other inhabitants we learn about are the mayor and the bishop. Why does everyone relevant to the plot have to be in the same family?

So there's lots of stuff like that. But there's much more wrong with this book. Card's religious overtones dramatically detract here. One of the book's big themes explores worshiping false gods, and then does a smash cut—without any sense of self-awareness whatsoever—to a Catholic settlement that it plays entirely straight. Like, to the point of absurdity. The aliens don't question the christian god. The fucking sentient trees don't either. There isn't even any lampshading here as to why the christian god is OK, despite the characters knowing about the false gods.

And then there's this excellent cliffhanger ending, where Ender creates new humans out of his mind. Cool principle and a great place to end. But the book goes on for another hundred pages and sorta kinda briefly engages with these extremely flat, and so, so tired, characters. Nah dog; everyone knows you end the book when they show up.

Oh yeah and did I mention the deus ex machina where they can just wish ANYTHING THEY WANT into existence? It saves the day, but is underwhelming because nobody did anything to deserve it. And either it's going to ruin the next book, or require ridiculous lamp-shading to prevent from doing so.

idk man. Xenocide has the seeds of greatness in it, but it's got absolutely nothing on Speaker for the Dead, and doesn't inspire me to want to finish rereading this series.

I'm surprised to say this is the strongest so far in the Ender's series. It's a little more philosophical than the others but in a way that suits what's happening on the page plus it also includes a fantastically realistic anti-heroes journey I didn't expect.

I'm really not sure about the whole young Peter and Val surprise, it felt like it came out of nowhere purely for the purpose of sequels

Considering who wrote this, it's fascinating to see the issues of religious fundamentalism discussed in such detail.

Loved it! Brilliant and thought-provoking!

This is a book that delves deeply into philosophy and metaphysics, even more deeply into religion (and why you shouldn't preach it to an alien race), and has no doubt left a lot of readers feeling a little uneasy as this book asks very difficult questions and challenges its readers.

Looking at those poor reviews I can only assume that this book (alongside the 2nd one) isn't for everyone, especially if you are expecting more like the first book. There is more philosophy than action, with the question of how do we eventually treat an alien species examined from just about every perspective, and in contrast with the first book which can be placed between the young adult genre, the 2nd and this one are definitely for the adult public.
I myself very much enjoyed the first 2 books in the series, and I think this one is the best so far.

On the other hand, Greg and Quara's character development is really poor (i guess intentionally), annoying brats.

Pentru mine nu a trecut testul celor 100 de pagini. In rezumat, vorbărie, ceartă, vorbărie, vorbărie și tot așa, fara nimic interesant. Extrem de plictisitoare. Chiar mai rău, mult mai rău decât Vorbitor in numele morților, altă telenovelă proastă, vag conectată cu Ender. Din partea mea, dez-recomand Xenocid.

Toward the end of this story, several crises are resolved. Unfortunately, the ‘science' that resolves these problems is completely unbelievable and unscientific. It's almost as if the author painted himself into a corner - and decided to fix technological problems by allowing a genie in a lamp to pop up. Quite disappointing.

Very long. Very philosophical. But I still liked it. Just not as much as the first two books in the series.

I can't say that I liked it very much. The first half of the book was very slow and I found the characters to be boring. The plot didn't start to pick up until the second half of the book and there were many pieces of the plot that seemed forced in and unnatural. This book ended in a cliffhanger and even though that I don't have high hopes for the next book in the series, I want to read it to find out what happens next.

Short Review: I like Xenocide. I like sci-fi books that are primarily philosophical. But this is one where Card just tried to put too much into it. If he had kept this and Children of the mind as a single book book, then it probably would have been a better book.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/xenocide/

Got to the end of this and found out this is the first half of a book that was split into two parts by the publisher.

Speaker for the dead asks more questions than it answers. Xenocide and Children of the Mind are all about answering those questions. Although Children answers more questions, Xenocide has more heart.

Speaker for the dead asks more questions than it answers. Xenocide and Children of the Mind are all about answering those questions. Although Children answers more questions, Xenocide has more heart.

This was the first book that I've gotten on audiobook. I'm not sure if there are multiple versions, but I got the bbc one. It was well done. There were multiple voice readers, one for each of the major parts.

To the book. I thought this was a descent book, though I still think Ender's game is the best in the series. There are some twists and turns, but its very long in parts. I think it would have been much harder to read than listen to.

Continues on from Speaker for the Dead. Valentine and her family arrive on Lusitania, even as Starways Congress' Fleet bears down on the planet with the M.D Device. Ender is struggling under the impending doom from the Fleet, the adaptable and destructive descolada, the diplomacy between the three sentient species and the problems within his own family.

Introduces Han Qing-jao, Han Fei-tzu and Si Wang-mu, who live on the Taoist Chinese world of Path. They are given a mandate to discover the whereabouts of the Lusitania fleet after Jane hid it. Raises issues of servility, as well as the nature of religion and faith when it has been engineered into you.

Orson Scott Card expands on his idea of the philotes, indivisible particles that join and create everything real. They use this idea to permit instantaneous starflight by shifting to the Outside and back In. Possible relations to string theory? The concept of an auia, the spirit philote which represents an individual - controlling a network of smaller auias in cells etc. resembles a physical soul. Provides mechanism for Jane's emergence, and for the transfer of memories in the pequenino lifecycle.

Ender

Good story, but I was bored in patches since Card decided to ramble and over explain situations and feelings.

A profound and complex story, but not as good as Speaker for the Dead. There seemed to be some noticeable weakening in the writing style between the two books or maybe the repetition of some large-scale themes explains the difference. Also, though the people of the Path invention was clever, it was not fun to read and a bit too critical of religious people. Either way, still a very strong science-fiction novel and I am eager to continue with the series.

This book was horrible! It feels like 1/2 of the book is spent describing a character with very little contribution to the story. The author describes at length its home world, its daily activities and rituals. And although these aspects does have importance in the book, it was TOO LONG. Another 3/4 of the book is dedicated to Jane, the very uninteresting AI. She's alright as a side character, not as a main one.

The other characters are Ender's children. For absolutely no reason, all but of them exceeded at one field of study. They just felt as little variations of Ender himself. Totally pointless. And the one who didn't exceeded at anything, ended up saving th world. WTF!

To sum it up, much biography, little unbelievable story. The author explains that he was told that the book was sold before it was even written.

If you're into long-winded speculations on morality, free will, and the space-time continuum, than you will enjoy this book immensely because there is not much else going on here. Xenocide is really dialogue heavy, way more than Speaker for the Dead and Ender's Game, even more than the Shadow books I think. And by dialogue I don't just mean conversation, we're talking inner monologues that go one for pages. Some of those can be rather self-deprecating, rivaling Samson Agonistes on the angst-level, but its not unwarranted (Samson was blind, Miro was severely crippled and essentially had everything static in his life ripped out from under him - I think Miro takes that cake). I was a little disappointed that the normal wit used in Orson Scott Card's books was lacking, every once in while it would pop back in and there would be a good laugh and a one-liner you're dying to use on someone, but for the most part things keep pretty serious.

As with Card's ability though, there is still a lot emotional investment going on, and he manages it subtly enough that you don't notice until the anvil drops. I found myself a mess at points asking myself, “Why am I so upset by this? I didn't even like that guy.” There are also a lot of really interesting new characters introduced, keeping things lively, and while some plot points were predictable, it was more satisfying than cliche. So if you're looking for a more plot and action driven story, this is not for you. But if you feel like getting deep into some metaphysical shit, not to mention falling in love with these characters, then have at it.