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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
Definitely better than most of the Shadow series but I probably just have a soft spot for Andrew Wiggin.
An interesting, but not brilliant addition to the Ender series. The pacing was uneven with a big build up to a potential power struggle that quickly resolved itself much too easily to be emotionally satisfying. Then the book kind of wandered around as it tried to tie up loose ends that the author felt were dangling in the series.
Keep in mind that I never read any of the Shadow Series, which means that some of the characters and even large chunks of the plot were presented to me without context. Still, I followed things okay. I liked seeing Val and Ender as kids again, and some of the plot development and the twists and turns with the new characters were quite fine. It doesn't really hold up against the rest of the Ender series, in my opinion. It just seems like an excuse to make Ender seem even more brilliant and awesome. I'm not exactly complaining about that, but even so, this book didn't contain the philosophical depth of the others in the series. In my opinion, of course. It was a good book, but the others about Ender are great, so it suffers in comparison.
Even years after writing the original book, this was a fabulous addition to the story and nicely fills in some of the gap between the end of Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. As with all of Card's books I couldn't put it down. I hope to be able to finish off the entire series at some point.
Specifically the audio versions of these books are wonderful as the cast of voices suits the quality of the material and truly brings Card's characters to a rich life.
Specifically the audio versions of these books are wonderful as the cast of voices suits the quality of the material and truly brings Card's characters to a rich life.
adventurous
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
fast-paced
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
i liked Ender in Exile well enough. it was interesting, because the transition between ender the battle school graduate and the ender on lusitania in the later books is well done and at the same time, not. it's obvious that ender is not as mature as he is when he lands on lusitania. yet, it's hard to say that he changes much. to be fair, ender in exile only covers about 50 of the 3000 realtime years that ender is voyaging. still, i guess i expected more of a transition. valentine is also somewhat bothersome. she thinks she understands everyone and everything and their intentions, when she so clearly does not understand the complete story of everything. this isn't the valentine that the reader trusts and respects and loves in the other books. ender in exile was mostly a light, entertaining read, but it didn't do much for the saga, besides start off anti-ender sentiments to build in the future and discover the identity and whereabouts of Bean and Petra's last son (which, i guess, is effectively more an addition to the shadow series). at this point in the saga, i think card is writing just to write. there was no need to write ender in exile, but i think his mind wanted more information to fill in that gap from ender's game to speaker for the dead - that he wanted to make it clear to himself. the thing is, though, he had already said enough on the topic in the other books of the saga, and that made reading ender in exile kind of like deja vu. it made me remember a bunch of other things that he said in other novels that fit in with the happenings of the plot, without the story actually contributing to any of these memories and whatnot
adventurous
informative
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
slow-paced