Orson Scott Card - Ender

I've been reading the Ender series of books by Orson Scott Card. The first book, Ender's Game, was lent to me by my buddy, Court. It was excellent. The second book, Speaker for the Dead, and the third, Xenocide, were pretty good reads, but were far from complete stories. They came to conclusions of the immediate conflicts, but left lots of unresolved threads. I read those two in the last week or so.

Updated:8/19/2007
Updated:8/19/2007

I'm enjoying them, but its looking like they are written with the express purpose of selling the next book, rather than for the story. I went to Borders today and bought 3 more in the series. The first book was pretty believable in its premises, but the others are "getting out there." There's a pretty good character introduced, Jane, who is an "artificial intelligence," that looks to be somewhat of a crutch, with far too much depending upon her existence and abilities. Its Sci-fi, so I suppose its to be expected, but its becoming a bit too much. I'm hoping they will return to a more realistic scenario, even if it is Sci-fi. At some point sometimes Sci-fi can turn into pure fantasy, and if I wanted that, I'd be reading about dragons and fairies and Middle-Earth and such. We'll see, I'll let you know when I know more. Meanwhile, I would recommend the first in the series, Ender's Game.

The second book, Speaker for the Dead, and the third, Xenocide, and the forth Children of the Mind, should all be purchased together and read keeping in mind that Children of the Mind is the real ending.

I'm reading Ender's Shadow currently and it is a parallel story to Ender's Game. It's a story about one of the other characters from Ender's Game. I'm in Chapter 9 of 24 Chapters. It promises to be as good if not better than Ender's Game. I'm enjoying it so far.

Updated:8/19/2007
Ender's Shadow was well worth the read. Very well done from another viewpoint, the story parallels Ender's Game, but perhaps exceeds it story-wise. Enjoyable is a word that the memory of reading it brings to mind.

I've also put the Next book in the series, Shadow of the Hegemon behind me, and found it to be better than the Xenocide storyline. I enjoyed it, but again, the original story is broken into two separate books, much as the Xenocide series had been, this time pushing what was to be a 3 book arc into a 4 book arc. I still need to go purchase the remaining books from the Ender series, Shadow Puppets, and Shadow of the Giant. I'll update after I know more about them.

On a side note, Card's Afterward (his explanations to the reader, which is something I really like about his books,) he mentions "the Clinton Administration's "immoral decision to launch unprovoked attacks on Afghanistan and the Sudan in the late summer of 1998." I find it interesting that this particular bit was written before 9/11 happened, and wonder if he might like to retract his statement now. The first bombing of the World Trade Center had occurred already, and didn't it lose a whole lot less lives both American and others, than what GWB's pointless action in Iraq cost?

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