I know several readers, myself included, who were blown away by Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. They then found the sequel, Speaker for the Dead, to be equally as riveting and eagerly reached for Xenocide, book three in the series, with the highest of expectations--only to be slammed with disappointment. This otherwise serviceable book, with an original premise and interesting characters, crashes to an unsatisfying and confusing ending that combines the worst attributes of deus ex machina and sequel hooking. Back in the mid-90s, it seemed that only the most devoted of Ender fans dared to approach the fourth book, Children of the Mind. The rest of us avoided it like the descolada virus itself.This situation may have changed over the ensuing decade as Card has published a number of prequel and sequel books in the Ender universe including a notable series about the life and times of Ender Wiggin's schoolmate, Bean. As the story world has expanded, characters have been fleshed out, political systems have been better defined, and the original quadrology has been reframed into a new context. Xenocide-burned readers may finally be ready to take tentative steps toward CotM--or at least that's my theory, after receiving an endorsement of the book from a friend who described it as "not as bad as everyone thought it would have to be."So I read the book and it was, indeed, not as bad as everyone thought it would have to be--but it's no Ender's Game, either.It helps to know that Xenocide and CotM were originally conceived as a single volume, which was divided in half when the page count climbed higher than the publisher was willing to accommodate. CotM's confusing and disjointed opening takes place only moments after Xenocide's confusing and disjointed ending, and neither book feels complete on its own. I'm sure the author did the best he could but the result still reads like a botched operation to separate conjoined twins.CoTM starts in the middle of the action with no easy recap for those of us who haven't read the previous book in a while, so a better transition would have been appreciated. Perhaps something like I've done in this episode of Book Review Theater...EXTERIOR - EXTRASOLAR PLANET WITH THREE MOONS IN AN ORANGE SKY, WHERE PEOPLE STROLL ALONG A BOARDWALK THAT SEPARATES A BEACH ON ONE SIDE FROM URBAN BLIGHT ON THE OTHER - LATE EVENINGA cardboard box appears from nowhere. Peter Wiggin and Si Wang-mu emerge, look around in confusion for a moment, and confront the first man passing by.PETER: Excuse me, sir? MAN: Yeah? Whatta you want?PETER: I'm an extra-universally created simulation of Peter Wiggin, the late Hegemon of the Free People of Earth, under the spiritual control of Andrew "Ender" Wiggin who is and will remain, until his imminent death of old age, reviled and celebrated, respectively, as Xenocide and Speaker for the Dead.WANG-MU: And I am Wang-mu, a former slave with artificially-enhanced intellectual capacity, ironically named after a Chinese goddess. Also ironically, the so-called free people of my society were in fact enslaved to outside powers by virtue of their genetically-crafted OCD tendencies while peasants and slaves like myself remained actually free.PETER: With the aid of Jane, a unique artificial intelligence originally created by an alien race that's falsely presumed to be extinct at the hands of my apparent younger brother and puppetmaster, we are travelling from Wang-Mu's home world--WANG-MU: The Planet Where Everyone Is Chinese.PETER: Right. From Wang-Mu's home world, The Planet Where Everyone is Chinese, we were meant to find The Planet Where Everyone Is A Pacific Islander by way of The Planet Where Everyone is Japanese.WANG-MU (looks around): With my advanced intellect, I've determined that this is not any of those worlds.MAN: Nah. This is The Planet Where Everyone Is From New Jersey. Got a problem with that?PETER: Not at all, my hairy knuckle-dragging friend. It would seem that Jane is playing a practical joke on us, or perhaps manipulating our journey in the same way that everyone around us seems to be constantly manipulating everyone else in some way or other.WANG-MU: Including ourselves.PETER: I'm sorry for taking up your time, but we really must be going. A fleet is approaching The Planet Where Everyone is Brazilian with the intention of blowing the whole thing up, not knowing yet that a cure to the dreaded species-scrambling descolada virus has been found, or that their actions would mean genocide for the last remaining Buggers as well as the native Piggies and Jane herself--who is unique enough to be considered her own species. Did I mention that Jane has the ability to pop people in and out of the universe, allowing them to create impossible objects, bring people back from the dead, and cure brain damage or deformities of the body?WANG-MU: Which is why we must prevent Congress from shutting Jane down by persuading some influential philosophers that the events of World War II back on Earth are still relevant in space so many thousands of years later.Peter and Wang-mu step back into the cardboard box, which promptly vanishes.MAN: What a couple of self-important jerks!Something like that would have helped a lot, although the premise does seem rather silly and far-fetched when you try to boil it down to a few short paragraphs of exposition. It also reveals a major weakness of the story world: the assumption that Earth would colonize new worlds on a nation-by-nation basis and that the resulting planetary cultures would not change or evolve noticeably from their progenitors. This detail seems glaringly unrealistic in light of Card's obsession with such anthropological details as food, architecture, and language.Ender himself hardly appears in this book, and perhaps the most memorable character from Xenocide, OCD-laden genius Han Qing-jao, is missing entirely--only represented in CotM by tantalizing excerpts from her philosophical writings, which serve as thematic chapter headers. But Qing-jao's presence would perhaps have been redundant since she is far from the series's only deep-thinking philosopher and author of impactful works that have changed the lives of billions or trillions of people. In addition to Quing-jao, this would include Ender (author of a trilogy that has stayed continuously in print for over three thousand years), Valentine and Peter (who manipulated world governments through their pseudonymous writings as Demosthenes and Locke), Aimaina Hikari (whose works inspired attempted xenocide), Grace (whose writings inspired Hikari), Malu (whose works inspired Grace), and Plikt (who, as the speaker for Ender's death, has a lock on a future bestseller as well).Only Ender's stepdaughter, Quara, seems to lack the bug for philosophizing and authorship, so of course the other characters use her as a punching bag for their verbal abuse--which highlights another annoyance I experienced with this book. Every scene is either a dramafest of angst and confrontation or an excuse for long philosophical soliloquies that usually include at least one Shakespeare quotation. Or often, both. Almost without exception, every philosophical theory presented in the book is then subsequently picked apart and discarded as childish and simplistic compared to the unexpressed deeper thoughts that all of our genius characters are keeping to themselves. This makes for one long, emotionally draining, and often pompous book.Bottom Line: Every reader of thought-provoking science fiction, age 10 through 110, should pick up copies of Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. My prior warning to avoid Xenocide is tempered somewhat, but anyone who continues onward in the series should read Xenocide and Children of the Mind together and be prepared for an exhausting and confusing ride.
I just finished this book and I read it not too long after reading 'Xenocide'. I really should review 'Xenocide' but I wanted to get this out while it was still fresh since 'Children of the Mind' was so awful. A full review of 'Xenocide', though, isn't really necessary since both books are terrible and suffer from the same flaws.The big problem with this book is that Card violates the 'Show, Don't Tell' rule of writing. This book consists almost exclusively of long dialogue between characters and very long monologues and/or character ruminations. Even though a lot is happening in the book - colonies of buggers, pequeninos, and Lusitanians are moving off-world; the Starways Congress Fleet is traveling to Lusitania to destroy it; Peter and [the hyper-annoying] Wang-Mu are conducting Card's ridiculous idea of shuttle diplomacy - Card only ever has characters talk about it, rather than have the reader along for the ride. Card even takes the excitement out of space flight for Pete's sake.Then there is Card's half-baked morality/philosophy baked into the crust of this mud pie. For example, Peter's 'mission' is to sway political opinion against the fleet's use of the Molecular Disruptor (M.D., or the Little Doctor, first seen in 'Ender's Game'). They do this by going to exactly two planets - neo-Japan and, I'm not making this up, neo-Samoa! They have exactly two meetings (one on each planet) with two philosopher/academic types. These meetings consist of some pseudo-philosophical claptrap that is supposed to pass for weighty jousting of ideas of serious moment and then, presto! change-o! political opinion in the Congress of ONE HUNDRED WORLDS is changed and an order goes out telling the fleet not to use the Little Doctor!Then there is the pointless conflict and endless hand wringing over where Jane's soul (or aiua) will go. It's obvious that Jane will end up in the Young Val that returns from the initial faster-than-light space flight at the end of 'Xenocide'. But that doesn't stop Card from allowing his characters (such as they are) from arguing and bickering endlessly about it. As if that's not bad enough, the conflict is repeated (albeit on a blessedly smaller scale) with the question of where Ender's soul will go when he dies. (If you haven't figured out that it's Peter, hit yourself in the head with a hammer.)Which brings me to yet another annoying thing about this book - the endless bickering between the characters. It's not enough that the book is endless dialogue. It's a lot of endless bickering, sniping and malicious psychoanalysis between the characters. First of all, very, very few people (and when I say 'very, very few' I mean none) has the acumen that Card's characters have. No-one really knows what anyone else is really thinking or why they do what they do. This makes it all the more unforgivable for Card to saddle the book with loads of shrill attacks between Jane and Ender, Jane and Miro, Young Val and Miro, Peter and Wang-Mu, Ender and Novinha, Quara and everyone! It reminded me of why I stopped reading Card's Homecoming series, which suffered from the same shortcoming.Also, Card doesn't pass up the opportunity to re-hash all his earlier sermo - I mean, arguments from the previous three books about how it is wrong for one species - in this case, humans - to exterminate another - in this case, the buggers (notwithstanding the fact that the buggers were attacking humankind). Except that he doesn't even make an argument; it's simply an assertion. He doesn't explain why it was wrong of Ender to destroy the buggers' home world when they had attacked humans. He just declares that it is (and saddles poor Ender with the guilt). It was unconvincing the first several times Card made it and unnecessary in this volume.I think this book suffers from the Forced Franchise Syndrome. That's my own term for when a filmmaker, or in this case author, takes a perfectly good standalone property ('Ender's Game' in this case) and tries to string it out to create a series when it's not supported by the material. My two favorite examples of this are the Pirates of the Caribbean and the Matrix movies.I rarely give up on a book once I have started it. I thought long and hard about it with this one. In the end, the reason I didn't was because the book was relatively short and it only took me a little over three days to get through it.
What do You think about Children Of The Mind (2002)?
After reading the earlier books in the series, the final installment was really a disappointment. However, since this was essentially the second half of Xenocide (which I actually enjoyed), I pushed myself to finish the book to find out what happens to Ender, the Piggies, the Descolada virus, etc. Sadly, those topics where overwhelmed by the pages and pages devoted to the love stories which were seemingly modeled after a supernatural tween romance. This can be exemplified with the following passage (which was edited as to not give away too much of the plot):~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~She reached up and touched the tears on his cheek. Then she touched her damp finger to her own cheek. The tears commingled."Let's do the civilized thing," she said. "Let's get married."Is this a proposal?" he asked."I'm in a hurry. And you, haven't you wasted enough time, too? Aren't you ready?""But I don't have a ring.""We have something much better than a ring," she said. She touched her cheek again, where she had put his tear. It was still damp; still damp, too, when she touched the finger now to his cheek. "I've had your tears with mine, and you've had mine with yours. I think that's more intimate even than a kiss."~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~If this kind of writing had been sprinkled in a few places in the story, I could have lived with it. However, emoting protagonists became the main thrust of the book and the political and science fiction elements that I so enjoyed from the original book took a back seat. That said, there still were interesting story lines and some of the mysteries from earlier books were resolved, so it may be worth reading if you need closure on the Ender saga...
—John
It's just getting silly now. I'm glad this book 'ends' the Ender saga (even though Card then went on to chuck out some prequels.) It was a great page turner, I think this is something Card does very well - however, the more I read of his work, the more I think this is because I have developed the knack of knowing when to skip one of his long expository paragraphs about how someone feels. As I mentioned in another review, he is very tell not show about his characterization. To be fair, he has so
—Neil
I wanted to love this. I really did - after all, I love Miro, who is given a lot more page space, and I was excited to see what Peter would bring to the table. But after Xenocide, it was pretty weak. Now to make a few comments (ehem, rants)…a) Why is it that the only truly negative bits in the series come from the women? You know, the only truly unforgivable, unredeemable, unreasonable, and supremely infuriating bits… Let me summarize what these bits were: QUARA, Qing-Jao, and Novinha. Welcome to the Hate Club. QUARA: I've never read a nastier b**** than Quara. She should've been sacrificed to her beloved descolada. No one should have to put up with the kind of crap behavior, attitude, and total disregard of authority and sense that Quara consistently subjected everyone to. She is the only absolutely unredeemable character in the books. Screw the daddy issues. She was a [horribly] flawed character without any saving grace. Not a one. I quite successfully hated her. QING-JAO: represents the kind of brainwashed religious fanatic that is ultimately pardonable, and pitiable, because they truly believe they are doing the right thing. But man, what a waste of a highly-educated and once perfectly rational mind. This is the unreasonable bit. (*note: Qing-Jao appears in Xenocide.) NOVINHA: So Ender finally commits himself to a woman, and he has to choose a massively-scarred, emotionally-wrecked, paranoid, vitriolic control freak who, it was revealed, never really gave him her unconditional love and devotion (view spoiler)[ (He wanted kids so badly yet she was not interested in disrupting her career! Selfish hag!!! After all he went through, and all he did for humanity, and for her family, to rob him of that irreplaceable experience…) (hide spoiler)]
—Monica
