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deluciate's review against another edition
3.0
Listened to this as an audiobook from the library. I was impressed with the narrators; they made the characters come alive and led me to focus on different aspects of Card's writing.
I found the political / military discussions tedious. I don't know if that's just because I'm not particularly interested in the subject, or because it really is tedious. I just want to know what happens to the characters... Now that I write that out, I can see parallels between me and one character who doesn't care what happens to the rest of the world. Card is a good writer. This is not my favorite of his stories.
I found the political / military discussions tedious. I don't know if that's just because I'm not particularly interested in the subject, or because it really is tedious. I just want to know what happens to the characters... Now that I write that out, I can see parallels between me and one character who doesn't care what happens to the rest of the world. Card is a good writer. This is not my favorite of his stories.
samuel_peterson's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Thoughtful and philosophical. Hardly science-fiction as much as it is dystopian and speculative.
jklingsporn's review against another edition
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
parkp's review against another edition
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
ratgirlreads's review against another edition
1.0
There's a limit to how much Orson Scott Card one can read at once, and this book is unusually heavy-handed, even for him, on his particular brand of Christian morality. Instead of having multiple characters grappling with a few ethical questions, not all coming to the same sorts of conclusions, and leaving some ambiguity as to whether the choices they made were the right" ones
sanneroemen's review against another edition
1.0
It's nice to have some context from which to comprehend some of the other books. But it's quite boring tedious superfluous. Liked it because it helped put me to sleep at night
authoraugust's review against another edition
3.0
I think I last read this book a good five or six years ago. Reading it again now was definitely a different experience, as I've gone through the heartache of not knowing when you'll see your beloved again, if ever, so my emotions were much closer to the surface. I am a HUGE Bean/Petra shipper, so this book makes me happy for that reason -- although Anton's whole rant about marriage (between one man and one woman, of course) made me reeeeally uneasy. Of all the Card things I've read recently, it most raised those red flags about his homophobia in the back of my mind. If it weren't for that, I would have made this a four or even five star book, because Card sure knows how to write a damn good adventure story, even one driven by a lot of vague political sources.
erikajdea's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
rainbyrd's review against another edition
4.0
I love this series; the politics are so complex and the characters are very interesting.
yoyosemite's review against another edition
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This was honestly hard to get through. Even though the plot develops nicely towards the end of the book, I find almost everything else quite lacking, with the exception of the war games/strategy component.
The biggest criticism I have of this book is the dynamic between Petra and Bean. Half of their conversations don't even feel human and just come across as gross when the author clearly intended the opposite. Also the fact that they're married in their mid-teens is off putting. Many of these exchanges made me question if humanity's ancestors should have even bothered to crawl out of the primordial soup.
Not only this, but Bean spends half the book occasionally making off-handed, mopey comments about how he's not human or he isn't worthy of love. While I think it's important to show this side of Bean, it becomes very repetitive very quickly.
The other component I dislike in this book is Peter. His portrayal here tries to ...humanize(?) him, but it just feels contradictory to prior books and makes him quite annoying. Frankly, I believe the role Peter needs to fulfill requires him to be a bit unlikeable and the way Card went about changing this somehow made him a less interesting character. Card even resorts to using Peter's parents to prop him up which just feels disgraceful, at least in how it was executed here. There are also some sections where Peter is downright stupid (not even talking about Achilles's betrayal ) in ways that just don't fit with his character.
As I said, there were parts of this I enjoyed; especially the snippets of Virlomi sowing rebellion amongst the Indians, Alai's strategy against the Chinese, and the final showdown between Bean and and Achilles. The last of these isn't perfect but I thought it was a fitting end to the story.
The biggest criticism I have of this book is the dynamic between Petra and Bean. Half of their conversations don't even feel human and just come across as gross when the author clearly intended the opposite. Also the fact that they're married in their mid-teens is off putting. Many of these exchanges made me question if humanity's ancestors should have even bothered to crawl out of the primordial soup.
Not only this, but Bean spends half the book occasionally making off-handed, mopey comments about how he's not human or he isn't worthy of love. While I think it's important to show this side of Bean, it becomes very repetitive very quickly.
The other component I dislike in this book is Peter. His portrayal here tries to ...humanize(?) him, but it just feels contradictory to prior books and makes him quite annoying. Frankly, I believe the role Peter needs to fulfill requires him to be a bit unlikeable and the way Card went about changing this somehow made him a less interesting character. Card even resorts to using Peter's parents to prop him up which just feels disgraceful, at least in how it was executed here. There are also some sections where Peter is downright stupid (
As I said, there were parts of this I enjoyed; especially the snippets of Virlomi sowing rebellion amongst the Indians, Alai's strategy against the Chinese, and the final showdown between Bean and and Achilles. The last of these isn't perfect but I thought it was a fitting end to the story.