Più pesante del precedente e, quindi, meno gradevole, forse anche perchè è cessato l'aspetto novità del volume precedente. Molti aspetti non mi hanno convinto: ho trovato il filone del Mondo di Path scollegato dal resto del racconto e poco utile alla storia; gli spunti religioso/filosofici sono eccessivi e la conclusione è troppo affrettata considerando i tempi di narrazione del resto del libro. Interessanti, ma non ben approfondite, le idee scientifiche.

I really enjoyed this. In all honesty, stick Ender Wiggin in any book and I'll probably love it. Unlike the last book which was basically a 300+ page ethnography, Xenocide went into the looming threats of the descolada virus, the growing threat of war between piggy and human, and the survival of every race in the galaxy. On the negative side, this book could have gone through some editing, as parts seemed to be long winded and overly drawn out. But overall, I really liked it.

I went from really enjoying Ender's Game to absolutely loving Speaker for the Dead and here I am feeling quite lukewarm about Xenocide. I knew what others felt about this installment but I decided to take my chances especially considering how much I enjoyed Speaker for the Dead.

What it comes down to is that the book was just entirely too long. If a quarter or so of the book was shaved off I think that my enjoyment would have increased quite a bit. There were several aspects that just felt unnecessary to the story and by the end I was just getting tired.

I still liked the book enough because it has all my same characters that I love so much here. Card has a way of writing where, yes, the content is sci-fi but there is so much character work going on that it feels a bit like a contemporary as well. The characters are definitely what buoyed the book for me. I also enjoyed a positive look at AI in regards to Jane once again. So often AI is portrayed in a villainous light so that was a breath of fresh air.

At the close of this book I had pretty much decided that I was going to be done with the Ender's series. But then I read the afterword. Card said that this book was supposed to be one long epic of an installment but the publishers decided to split it into two and that's why HE thinks that this book wasn't received as well as the previous two and that the readers may feel better about the ending of the next installment, Children of the Mind, so here I am undecided on what to do. I can't say for sure that I will continue on (but, I mean, let's be real, I am a book junkie and tend to be a completionist) but I will be taking a break from the series for a while before coming back.

Ender Serisi'nin üçüncü kitabı olan Soykırım'ın çevirisini nihayet bitirdim. Ama ben de bittim. Sanırım "2312" (Kim Stanley Robinson) adlı devasa bilimkurgu romanından sonra çevirdiğim en zor kitap buydu.

Aslında 2312 kadar bilimsel açıklama yoktu içinde, onun kadar ağır da değildi. Filotlar ve çalışma presipleriyle ilgili sayfalarca süren, karmaşık açıklamaları saymazsak tabii. O kısmı gerçekten zorluydu.

Mesonlar, atomlar, nötronlar falan derken "filot" adını verdiği yeni olguyu bildiğimiz fizik kurallarının içine katmayı ve yepyeni bir fiziksel düzen kurmayı hedeflemiş yazar.

Ama bir önceki kitabında kime insan denir, kime uzaylı tartışmasından yola çıkan Card bu sefer işi bir adım ileriye götürüp tanrı nedir, kime tanrı denir konusunu irdelemiş. Batı ve Uzak Doğu dinlerini ayrı ayrı ele alıp bunları birbirleriyle çarpıştırmış. İnancı sorgulamış.

Öyle olunca da felsefi ve teolojik tartışmaların bol bol döndüğü, 600 sayfalık bir roman çıkmış ortaya. 3 ayda bitiririm dediğim kitabın çevirisini 6 ayda zor tamamladım.

Özetle, beynim yandı

O serie geniala, mi-a placut tare mult - sunt puse in discutie foarte multe teme (inca actuale), iar modul de prezentare este inedit, surprinzator.
Personajele sunt atent construite si foarte bine conturate, iar universul imaginat te acapareaza foarte usor.
Sigur vreau sa le recitesc la un moment dat. :)

Xenocide (Ender's Saga #3), Orson Scott Card

Xenocide (1991) is a science fiction novel by American writer Orson Scott Card, the third book in the Ender's Game series. On Lusitania, Ender finds a world where humans and pequeninos (Portuguese for "Little Ones") and the Hive Queen could all live together. However, Lusitania also harbors the descolada, a virus that kills all humans it infects, but which the pequeninos require in order to become adults. The Starways Congress so fears the effects of the descolada, should it escape from Lusitania, that they have ordered the destruction of the entire planet, and all who live there. With the Fleet on its way, a second Xenocide seems inevitable.

The war for the survival of the planet Lusitania will be fought in the heart of a child named gloriously bright.

Says the cover. Such a misleading thing to say. This novel was 500 pages of bullshit, and 91 pages of slight enjoyment. More or less 81.8% of useless shit.

Nominated for the Hugo award? Thank heavens it didn't win.

I loved Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, but Xenocide was just bullshit. It even felt like Card didn't write this. How could he create amazing characters, and manage to make them lifeless all of a sudden? I didn't feel any kind of connection with any of the characters in this third novel. To make things worse, this novel is way too long. 591 pages, rambling on about uninteresting stuff.

The main goal of this novel I believe was to keep things interesting by introducing another possibility of a "xenocide", but all it did was introduce another set of alien species that are not even likeable. They were flat and unrelatable. I'm chinese, and I couldn't even relate to the characters. They were written that bad. I even had to check the front cover to see if Card wrote this alone. Unbelievable how much I hated this novel.

The list of annoying things does not end. Card made the characters seem like they were trying to be like Ender a lot. Miro, Grego, and Wang-mu were all pretentious in this novel. They were trying too hard to be likeable, but they seemed like losers. Especially Wang-mu, and the twist that Card wrote in the near end about her was not even good. She was not a likeable character from the start, so relentlessly trying to make her likeable is not going to work. You might ask, who could be more annoying than Wang-mu? Qing-jao. Another pretentious little bitch. All her whining from the start annoyed me already. I got it the first time, you don't want the life that you were given, so stop whining about it every fucking time you appear in a chapter.

Ender himself was fucking unbearable in this novel. I saw this coming already, but Card just made it worse.

n   "Ela, after you've inadvertently killed a couple of people with your bear hands, either you learn to control your temper or you lose your humanity." n

You killed people with your bear hands? You fucking killed an entire species, shouldn't that be the cause of your "losing of humanity"? Terrible example given, and I thought you were supposed to be the amazing speaker of the dead/murderer of the buggers. And up to now, I still can't believe that he married Novinha. She was fucking crazy right from the start.

The plot itself ventured off a cliff. Instead of focusing on the main story, it focused on the art of whining instead. We get more of scrubbing grease off hands, Miro's paralysis, Ender's marriage, and Novinha's family problem rather than the fucking possibility of a Xenocide. Let me add the constant whining of everyone regarding Jane's "humanity". I don't give a rat's ass who created her, please talk about the fucking Xenocide instead. Based on the summary at the back, this should've been the best of the 3. Instead, I'm considering giving up on the whole series because of this being such a bullshit novel. Once I've calmed down though, I believe I'll be reading the next novel.

1.5/5 stars. I gave this 2 stars because I still have an ounce of mercy left in my system. Card could've done better, and he already proved that with the first two novels. I'm not sure what happened here, but I'm hoping the next novel wouldn't be this bad.

This novel should be called "The Art of Whining" and not "Xenocide".

Filosofía, religión, inteligencia artificial, dilemas éticos con otras razas, dramas familiares, todo en un conjunto tan entretenido de leer como es habitual en el amigo Orson. Esta saga no hace más que mejorar, tengo miedo seguir leyendo por si no es capaz de mantener este nivelazo.

La dinámica entre Ender y Jane, al más puro estilo Scarlett Johansson y Joaquín Phoenix en Her, me parece uno de los highlights.

I have been enjoying Orson Scott Card’s books, and so far my favorite is probably Enders Game with a very close second of Speaker For the Dead. This book however was disappointing to me. It felt like another series or something; for some reason it felt different. Ended is hardly in it, there’s this somewhat interesting but ultimately boring plot about a pseudo-religion, there’s another somewhat interesting plot revolving around an intelligent disease and whether or not it counts as life, and there’s the odd-ball plot of what lies outside the known universe. They are all threaded together in the end, but it felt a bit forced in some ways: when Ender travels outside the known universe through Jane, and Peter and Young Val return; that felt dumb to me, like a forced point to merit a sequel. It was an interesting idea, but the whole Peter-Valentine clone thing was dumb. The bits about the pseudo-religion were very interesting but were surprising coming from Card, considering his religious background. The most interesting piece of the book is the ongoing discussion about what “intelligent life” is and how to interact with other forms of it; when is it acceptable to eradicate other species, when is another species considered intelligent, and stuff like that. I wish Ender was in this more because he is a very compelling and complicated character. I also felt a little uneasy about the disabled character (drawing a blank on the name) simply getting his desired form back: I wish the character arc would’ve resolved in some form of acceptance and moving on - because in real life, getting the old form back after a crippling accident is basically never going to happen (as it stands now and in most cases). I am still interested to see where the story goes, but based on the ending of this book, I’m not very excited about it. This book felt like it wanted to be Speaker for the Dead and discuss interesting philosophical ideas and moral thoughts, but it just didn’t work in my mind like Speaker did.

This was a very weakly written book. OSC has way too much dialogue without purpose, and weak characters, which is a sad way for Ender to have developed from the first book, Ideas and discussions and plot all meander throughout the novel, then OSC tries to wrap it up with a ridiculous deus ex machina that was frustrating to be asked to believe in. OSC's concept of gaiaology was another point of frustration. If you cannot include decent science in science fiction on a consistent basis, then don't write science fiction (the DEM and gaiaology were even more frustrating because OSC has shown in earlier books as well as parts of this one a very decent ability to include a respect for science in his writing. What happened this time? Laziness? Willful ignorance?). As a science teacher reading this is like what I imagine it would be for a prima ballerina to watch me execute a pirouette; extraordinarily frustrating, with a sense of outrage that such a discipline was mocked by such an oaf.
Again OSC tries to end this book with another couple of hanging plot threads that will entice people to read the next in the series. It didn't work for me; this is my last Ender book while I can still appreciate the original nature of Ender.

Eff all the romantic relationships in this book! They are so forced together, unromantic, and creepy. Also eff the silly sci-fi plot devices that bring around a predictable conclusion.

The pequeninos were great, but forever ruined by this stupid book!

One-quarter star knocked off for copious amounts of confucianism. Another one-quarter star knocked off for a ginormous deus ex machina. But still, STILL another beautiful, deeply profound installment in the Ender Saga. Children of the Mind is next. 4.5 stars.