62. Xenocide by Orson Scott Card (Science fiction) 592 p.

I didn’t love Xenocide quite as much as Ender’s Game or Speaker for the Dead. Not to say that it wasn’t a complex, exciting, wonderful, challenging book, because it was all of those things. Unfortunately, I didn’t like several of the things that happened. They weren’t wrong for the story, but they annoyed me, as did many of the characters, even as they also engrossed me. I still stayed up late because I couldn’t put the book down, though. In quality, Xenocide is every bit as good as its two prequels, but for personal reasons, I didn’t enjoy it quite as much.

This book is a close sequel to Speaker for the Dead, and takes up pretty much where that book left off. Valentine, her husband Jakt, and their family are halfway to Lusitania, about to meet up with young Miro Ribeira. By the time they arrive, 22 years have passed, and the Lusitania fleet, sent by Stairways Congress to take control of, and probably destroy, Lusitania Colony, is less than a year away. Tensions rise between the sentients species on Lusitania, and some kind of xenocide seems nearly inevitable, although who will be the victims and who the perpetrators is somewhat less clear.

Meanwhile, on the far-distant colony world of Path, a 16-year-old girl named Qing-jao (”Gloriously Bright”) makes a decision that may seal the fate of more than one species.

Orson Scott Card is at his brilliant best in the world-building he does in Xenocide. Path is a simply fascinating place, one of the most original future societies I’ve ever read about. As usual, OSC is a master at combining small-scale human concerns with sweeping moral investigations and implausible but gripping scientific speculation.

(I went looking to find out which novel beat out Xenocide for the 1992 Hugo, since both Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead won the award in previous years. Turns out it was Lois McMaster Bujold’s Barrayar. Bujold is one of my favourite SF authors, and I even love Barrayar, which a lot of fans don’t, but better than Xenocide? Come on.)

ETA: If you pick this up, you’re better off not reading the blurb or the author’s note, since both of them give away plot details that would be more fun to find out in the course of the book.

Pages read: 17,871

Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, A ~ Z Reading Challenge, Cardathon Challenge, Chunkster Challenge 2008, Ender quartet, Enderverse, Orson Scott Card