Orson Scott Card

In a dystopian world of twelve year old hookers and grade school street gangs, this is the story of undersized and super smart Bean. You might remember him as a minor character from Ender's Game when Bean was in battle school with Ender. In Ender's Shadow Orson Scott Card takes us back to Bean's beginning where survival was only for the smartest. Bean is so smart you have to wonder if he is indeed human and not some genetically altered freak. This was my favorite Card book yet. I loved the show more character of Bean. I liked seeing a different side of the same story as Ender's Game. The end of Ender's Shadow was also a welcomed surprise. show less

The first two-thirds of the Xenocide consider the ethics of exterminating an intelligent species that poses an existential threat. Are the Ender’s Buggers, the loveable piggies and their trees, clever but dangerous Jane the AI, and the deadly but intelligent Descolada virus equally worthy of our care? Toward the end, the focus shifts less successfully to more purely religious questions—the existence and nature of God and the soul.

It's heavy stuff for a science fiction novel. Ender is show more often shoved into the background, and talk can bury the plot. However, the nuanced discussion of ethics makes it all worthwhile. I will never think about Star Trek’s Prime Directive in quite the same way. show less

I very much enjoyed the first half of this book. I felt that it set up an interesting situation and characters: Lanik is a young man from a clan which has learned to genetically regenerate themselves, making them undefeatable in battle and virtually immortal. Unfortunately, sometimes the genetic modification goes wrong, and rather than just regenerating lost or damaged limbs, etc, the body keeps growing new parts, requiring surgery, becoming monstrous. Usually, those people are harvested for show more extra parts - which are sold offworld. But since Lanik was the heir, he is spared that fate - and merely exiled.
So far, so good.
Lanik goes on a quest to discover the secret of why a rival clan is acquiring unprecedented amounts of metal - which their planet lacks. What are they selling offworld? He meets a powerful black woman, a leader of her tribe, who causes him to re-evaluate his racial beliefs. She's a wonderful character.
But rather than stopping here, and tying the story together, at this point the book becomes formulaic and overblown.
Lanik travels from tribe to tribe, at each one acquiring some kind of superpower. (Each tribe is descended from one genius scientist who has passed on their secrets and abilities to their descendants - which is a pretty dumb concept in and of itself.) However, Lanik pretty much remains an arrogant bastard with a sense of entitlement. When he discovers he has been deceived, and that there is some sort of plot going on, rather than investigating the motivations and reasons behind the secret plan, he commits genocide against the tribe that the deceivers came from, and without consulting anyone, makes a decision that will affect everyone on the planet.
Card obviously wishes the reader to contemplate the moral decisions that Lanik has made, but I also got the feeling that Card thinks that Lanik was right, that his actions, although unpleasant, were justified by the strength of Lanik's convictions that what he was doing was the right thing for his planet. However, I disagree quite strongly - I do not believe that because someone is stronger, or believes themselves to be more enlightened, that they have the moral right to make major decisions for others. I also do not feel that the deaths of innocents are justified merely because those innocents belong to the same race or tribe as people that you perceive have done you wrong. show less

So great to revisit one of my absolute favorite novels of all time!

Back when I first read this, Andrew Wiggin immediately jumped into my heart to become my ultimate role-model, my hero, and the idealized version of myself. Ender's Game had him go through some horrific things and really set the stage for the man he was later to become, but it is the full-grown man that really pulls on my heartstrings.

No. He wasn't truly at fault for wiping out the Formics. That can be laid at other's feet. show more

But he absolutely pulled the trigger. And the end of Ender's Game showed us the beginning of his redemption. Where redemption takes the form of Understanding. And then telling All the Truth, the good and the bad. Exposing it to the world for good or ill. I LOVE how this turned into a very powerful force for good.

Better yet, I love how turning it upon this special world of Lusitania transforms everyone's lives this dramatically. Or how it affects four intelligent species. Or how it paves the way for real redemption.

I'm not all that fond of Christian motif stories because they're generally all ham-fisted and overdone. Like, A LOT. But this one does NOT go that way. It's humanist. It's understanding that all of us have good and bad within us, and that accepting (and really understanding) each other is can be the most life-affirming thing that any of us can do.

The story of Speaker for the Dead is powerful on all levels of worldbuilding, strange aliens, mystery, love, and sheer cussed awesomeness. The threat of another Xenocide times three is shocking enough on its own, but when combined with all the events from Ender's Game, Speaker basically turns me into a quivering ball of emotional jelly. And worse, the characters, and I mean ALL the characters, from Pequenios to Navi's family to Andrew himself, just draws such a warm feeling from me that I can't even stand it.

It's more messed up than Ender's Game. More wonderful. Deeper, adult, complex, painful, and glorious.

I can't particularly think of ANY novel that deep down affects me more on a personal level. I'm thinking along the lines of putting this in one of my top ten best novels of all time. :)

So gorgeous. So important. :) show less