This book is literally awful.

I really liked Ender's Game. I LOVED Speaker for the Dead. But this book is a horrible continuation of that saga. It let me down in virtually every way.

There were many characters in Speaker for the Dead that I began to love, and really connect with, but these same characters became wooden, stilted, and unbelieveable in Xenocide.

I hated the Path subplot, I hated the OutSpace nonsense, I hated the "Wish our problems away" solutions that ended the book, I hated the psuedoscience nonsense, I hated the way that the author made the scientists talk like fortean-obsessed dorks, I hated the horrible explanations for "natural" phenomena, I hated the religious apologetics...

I hated almost everything about this book. I was really expecting wonderful things after reading the two that came before. If this were the first book in the series, I would never have bothered to pick up any of the others.

Literally one of the worst books I have ever read. It is so bad it makes me angry. I think I have some kind of ocular strain from the number of eyerolls it induced in me. I hold a grudge now.

The author clearly has no understanding of science or the scientific method, but that didn't stop him from putting his foot in his own ass with literally laughable speculation about the nature of the universe. This guy should really stick to character drama, and leave the science fiction to people who are smarter than he is.

I may not continue the Ender Saga after this piece of trash has rotted so many of my brain cells.

How many stars do you give a book that starts off good, wanders around dully in the middle, and then becomes offensively horrible at the end? Do you average 5, 3, and 1 star? Do you give it 2 because of the overall picture? Do you give it 1 because it's doubly bad to start out promising and then mislead the reader?

I'm in the last category.

I'm 90% finished, and I think I'm not going to make it much further. I loved the first two books, but this one is sort of awful. It started out with a good mystery: who are the gods and how does this planet relate to the other, but that got resolved about 3/4 of the way through the book, somehow the struggles on Lusitania seem mostly tedious and obnoxious. All of this is fine though, all it did was impact my reading speed. Instead of chewing through the book, I read it at a casual pace. On the other hand, what happens at about 90% of the way through the book appeals only to people who have absolutely no grasp of science, or buy into that whole J.Z. Knight (the frustrated housewife who started channelling a 35000 opponent of atlantis and suddenly got rich) cult recruitment film: What the Bleep do we know?

I love the first two and this one started out well, but it explodes in a gigantic ridiculous Deus ex Machina event that reinforces that Orson Scott Card knows little about science, and expects the same from you.

Bleagh.

P.S. Just so you know, I lost all will to read this book right at the end. So I never actually finished the book. I asked my buddy who had initially warned me about it what happened and I call that good. I can't bear to read any more.

Tercer libro de la saga de “El juego de Ender”. A mi parecer ni este ni el segundo llegan al nivel del primero aunque me ha gustado más que el segundo de el portavoz de los muertos. Tiene partes en que se me ha hecho un poco pesado y lento.

Libro entretenido

UPDATE:

Officially DNFing this read. Hopefully I’ll pick it up again sometime in the future, but now is not that time.


~~~


Seriously considering DNFing for now because of a scene of horrific child abuse in the name of a gross barbaric religious order. They basically let their "gods" torture and manipulate their children by convincing the children that just by existing they are impure and defiled and must clean themselves and THEN (here's the kicker) they throw them into this locked room where the child is smeared with grease and the test is: CAN THIS CHILD CLEAN ITSELF OFF WITHOUT ANY HELP FROM ANYTHING BEFORE THEY GO SO INSANE THEY KILL THEMSELVES.

NO.

ORSON SCOTT CARD HOW DARE YOU.

CHILD ABUSE IS UGLY AND CRUEL AND AWFUL.

I hate this book now.

This xkcd web comic makes for the best review of this book. http://xkcd.com/304/

I didn't hate it. The philosophy and science annoyingly reminded me of Tom Clancy's later stuff where he rambles on and on over minutia no one but him and his 7 true fans really enjoy. The rest of us start skimming hoping to find something to make continuing to read worth it. Only to depressingly read the last sentence wondering why successful authors stop using editors.

This is the first book in this series that hasn't left me breathless. It was good, but not as good as Speaker for the Dead. It would be very hard for anything to be better than that book. I'm not sure I want to continue in this series. I feel satisfied after this book...

TOO LONG.

I grudgingly give this book a 3, based only on my affection for the characters and the creativity of the story. Most of the book suffers from overkill in one sense or another, which leads to its main problem of length. It´s impossible to deny that Card is brilliant, but I can think of no writers other than Tolstoy and Dickens (barely) that can justifiably write 600 or more pages of novel. Yes I'm aware I'm including Dostoyevsky in this statement (sorry Karamazov-lovers). Card could have brought this one in at under 500 and lost nothing while gaining much due to brevity.

Problems (where to start?):

Much of the length problem was due to tedious treatment of 3 of the main characters. Miro -- look, I get that he doesn´t like being paralyzed and that he´s wallowing in self-pity. You can cut at least 10 pages of his wallowing and I will still understand it. His transformation at the end will still be impactful.

Si Wang-Mu -- the introduction of Path and the gradual revelation of OCD was masterful. What I needed much less of was the hammering home of their inner turmoil over the gods. There´s a specific 5 page passage starting on 430 that as far as I can tell is used solely for Wang-Mu to ponder the nature of godhood. If you´re going to spend 5 pages on her, at least use it to develop the mind-boggling and completely inexplicable split-second decision she makes at the end to run off with New Peter.

Quara -- I did not swallow this character for one instant. Besides the ridiculous lapse in logic that she´s prepared to wipe out 2 species (including her own) so as not to kill 1 species, I´m supposed to believe that she´s defending Descolada just to get back at her family? And this is the first sign of mental instability that she´s shown in 30 years? Ender couldn´t have "healed" her in all that time (Is he a demi-god with supernatural powers of healing as shown in Speaker for the Dead or isn´t he?)? And then in all the arguments they had with her, no one could have raised the point that a dying Piggy raises at the very end: even if Descolada is a sentient being, it is a murderous and tyrannous one, and we have the right to defend ourselves.

This woman is simply insane, and I do not believe that she would have been allowed to affect so much of the goings-on if Card were trying to be at all realistic. She was used to create conflict in an already uber-conflictive book, and guess what -- not necessary! That´s almost 30 pages saved right there. Did anyone else catch the part where she was passing Ela´s defense work to the virus itself? Mentioned but never follwed up on.

My other objections are less grave. There´s the dialogue style, just as present in Speaker and to a lesser extent in Ender´s, where every character is constantly psychoanalyzing every other, and everything they say can be decoded to show a deep personal insight. Although it worked without overtly bothering me in the first two books it got to be too much in this one (perhaps due to the length). People don´t actually talk like this, or if they do I´ve never met them. It´s not natural and became intrusive to my reading experience. There was a bizarre narration sequence on page 100 where Card suddenly addresses the reader in the 2nd person -- jarring to say the least. Finally, there was the arrival of young Val and New Peter at the end, which I just thought was unnecessary. There was already PLENTY going on in this novel, why add more complication out of the blue?

This book was very frustrating to me, because there were so many really good things about it (mainly plot and the ethical/geo-political dilemmas), but some really bad ones as well.

Not Bad Movie and Book Reviews.

@pointblaek

The story continues 30 years after Speaker for the Dead, and the people of Lusitania try to solve the problems created in the previous book. For some reasom though, the characters feel less vibrant than previously, except maybe for Jane.
There is again some publicity for the orthodox (christian) society, which annoyed me again. As previously explained by the author, orthodoxy is needed to create civilisation, but it is even so that whithin the orthodox community, only those that are the most orthodox (the example used in the book is no premarital sex) can even start to aspire becomming usefull members for society. Maybe I just feel personnaly attacked, but it seems to me to be a rather limited view of humankind.
Anyway the plot itself is quite stagnant, which does highlight the difficulty of the situation the people are in. The ending felt forced though, as if the author just wanted more books.

Xenocide picks up Ender's story on Lusitania. With a starship on the way to destroy the planet, Ender and his family race to find a cure for the descolada, a virus integral to the life cycle of the pequeninos, but lethal to humans. Jane, a sentient being who came to life as a result of the bugger's attempt to contact Ender through the fantasy computer game, may die as a result of her efforts to help Ender stop the destruction of Lusitania. A faction of the pequeninos decides they want to bring the descolada virus to other planets and wipe out humanity.

The third book in the Ender series would have been better with about 200 less pages. I loved the conversations between the Hive Queen and the pequeninos and Jane's developing character. The philosophical discussions of religious concerns had some interesting elements, but went on far too long for my taste. I felt like Card was trying a bit to hard to teach a lesson. And all the family fighting--ugh--that got old too. You'd think that the starship coming to destroy the planet would be a bit more of a uniting factor. I didn't like this one as much as Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, but there was enough worthwhile stuff here that I will finish reading the series.

Preachy, with characters who are frustratingly flat. I read both this and Speaker for the Dead because the cosmos and philosophical problems that Card creates are so interesting, but the relationships between characters are often hard to accept. Ender and Novinha especially are such an unbelievable and odd couple, the premise of them together is so irritating that I docked the book a full star just for that.

It’s Getting Complicated

Xenocide, the third book of the Ender’s Game series, continues the story from Speaker For the Dead. It is a far more difficult story to follow as it is filled with philosophy, physics, religion, and strategy, much more than action and could perhaps have risked some editing. As it is, though some might find it obtuse, others will find its moral quandaries illuminating and rewarding.

Things are happening in the far-off planet where several intelligent species are co-existing. The humans still live within their fences. The piggies or pequeninos are everywhere. And, the queen bee is laying her eggs and building something. Because the descolada virus which is in every part of the planet’s environment and essential to the pequininos is deadly to the rest of the universe. And, there’s a fleet with a doomsday bomb ready to save the universe from the descolada and the reemergence of the alien species. And Jane is being revealed as she tries to quietly stop the fleet.

What makes this a worthwhile read is the moral issues and ethical quandaries of how to save the universe and for who. And whether the coexistence can continue. The themes of the difficulty understanding the alien species continue, but the threads connecting them all are complex and lead to dimensions and surprising results.

A very different novel from the first two in the series and a more complex read.

Had this been a stand alone novel, rather than a continuation of the Ender Wiggins series, it probably wouldn’t have irritated me so much. In the interview with the author at the end of the CD, he pretty much verifies what I thought throughout the whole novel. The premises of this book is one that he had first thought of as an independent story line, but since Ender Wiggins was a ready made hit, rolled it into the trilogy instead. With each subsequent book, Card looses a bit more of the initial power of Ender Wiggins. His need to explore philosophical ideas, in far greater depth than is necessary, overwhelms the story. One of the greatest aspects of Ender’s Game was that it delved into a number of deeper issues, without being in your face or pushy. It managed to be a fast paced, action oriented science fiction novel, while at the same time offering enough substance to appeal to a more intellectual mindset. Xenocide completely missed the mark in this aspect. The philosophical debates are rammed down your throat, detracting from, and eventually completely ruining, the characters introduced in Ender’s Game. Had he simply written a separate novel that dealt with the issues addressed in this novel, I think I would have enjoyed it much more. As it is, though, the forcing of a separate story plot into the continuing saga of Ender Wiggins did not work.