July 18, 2008 at 2:03 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
102. Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card (Science fiction) 358 p.
Sadly, Children of the Mind is the conclusion of the Ender quartet. Although OSC has two new Enderverse books planned (one of which, Ender in Exile, is due to be released on November 11), they are both set earlier in the timeline.
Card originally conceived of the stories told in Xenocide and Children of the Mind as one book, but realized that there was too much going on for just one novel (much as he did with Shadow of the Hegemon and Shadow Puppets.) Writing two novels instead of one was undoubtedly the best option (and I’m not just saying that because I think two Card novels are better than one!), but it meant that the conlusion of Xenocide was a little weak, because the true resolution of the threads started there had to wait for the end of Children of the Mind. And not just plot threads–a lot of character development hadn’t reached a good stopping place by the end of Xenocide, by which I mean that a lot of annoying characters were running around unchecked.
As I said, Children of the Mind is not so much a sequel as a continuation of Xenocide, and any summary of its events will necessarily contain spoilers for that novel. I did like it much better than Xenocide, not so much because it was a superior novel, but because for the most, none of the characters got on my nerves. It was a much less frustrating read.
Now that I’ve finished both the Bean quartet and the Ender quartet, I’m not really sure which I liked better. The Bean books had more action and more sweeping consequences, while the Ender books felt quieter, more thoughtful, more focused on ideas and discovery. Children of the Mind definitely has a lot of ideas to chew over; even the ones I don’t agree with are interesting to think about.
Rating: 10 out of 10
Pages read: ?
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Cardathon Challenge Redux, Ender quartet, Enderverse, Orson Scott Card
April 22, 2008 at 4:44 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
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
April 13, 2008 at 8:18 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
52. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (Science Fiction) 382 p.
I don’t know what to say about this book, because it’s so good, so wonderful, so human, in ways I don’t know how to articulate. But I’ll try.
Speaker for the Dead begins about 3,000 years after the end of Ender’s Game. It takes place on the small colony world of Lusitania, whose only human inhabitants are a small village of Brazilian-Portuguese Catholics. However, Lusitania is also home to the first sentient alien species humanity has encountered in the Bugger Wars three millenia earlier. Due to the time dilation effect of faster-than-light travel, Andrew Wiggin is still only 35 years old. When the call goes out for a speaker for the dead, he can’t resist travelling to Lusitania.
That’s a really inadequate summary, and it only touches on the plot, which, although excellent, isn’t at the core of the book. It’s the people and ideas that make Speaker for the Dead so special, that set it apart from other science fiction. OSC manages to explore some really compelling xenology and xenobiology (i.e. alien anthropology and biology), without sacrificing character development. Not all the people in Speaker for the Dead are human, but they are all interesting and complex and very, very real, because Card never takes the easy way out.
A good example of this is Bishop Pelegrino, the religious leader of the community. At first, he seems like the reactionary, righteous, slightly stupid Catholic priest recognizable from many other books, but Card is a better writer than to stop there. Although he does have these traits to some degree, they are far outweighed by his ability to be flexible, by his caring for his community, and by his compassion.
I love the world Card creates on Lusitania, because it’s just so interesting. The Piggies, of course, and the mystery of their society, but especially the human community of Milagre. I look forward to seeing more of both in the third book in the series, Xenocide. When I started this book, I didn’t think any sequel could come close to being as good as Ender’s Game, but I was wrong. As amazing as that book was, Speaker for the Dead somehow manages to live up to it. I can now number Orson Scott Card among my very favourite writers.
Pages read: 14,286
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, Cardathon Challenge, Ender quartet, Enderverse, Eponymous Challenge, Orson Scott Card, Sci-Fi Classics Challenge
February 11, 2008 at 3:33 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
8. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (Science Fiction) 226 p.
At the age of six, Andrew Wiggin, who prefers to be called Ender, is taken from his family to be trained as a soldier. Test results and close observation have convinced Earth’s military, in the form of a certain Colonel Graff, that Ender may hold the key to the planet’s defence. The enemy are the buggers, a race who have already sent two invasion forces with near-disastrous consequences for humanity. Once at Battle School, a combination of coursework, games, and psychological manipulation are used to train Ender for the most important battle of all.
Some time ago, I picked up a copy of First Meetings, a group of four stories set in the Enderverse, including the original Ender’s Game, a novelette that appeared in Analog in 1977 (it wasn’t expanded and published as a novel until 1985.) Somewhat against my better judgement, I read the novelette. Having heard so much about the novel, I wanted to read it. Once the novelette was in my hands, though, I couldn’t help but read it, even though I feared that it would provide an inferior experience and lessen my pleasure when it came time to read the “real” story. I was justified in the former fear, but not the latter.
The novel is by far the better telling of the story. It takes everything that was good about the novelette, and adds a wealth of detail, character development, and emotion, without a single wasted word. I thought knowing the end would make reading the novel pointless; instead, it only made clear to me how little Card depended on a flashy climax to keep the reader’s interest. As well as having more time to explore the existing characters from the novelette, the expanded form gave Card room to create many new secondary characters, all of whom are worth the space they’re given in the novel.
My trip to the bookstore today will definitely include a search for the first sequel, Speaker for the Dead. If you’re the slightest bit interested in SF or war fiction, and you haven’t read Ender’s Game yet, do it. Now. Today.
Pages read: 2,589
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Ender quartet, Enderverse, Orson Scott Card, Sci-Fi Classics Challenge, Unread Authors Challenge, What's in a Name?
