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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This book nestles in between the second to last and last scenes of Ender's Game, where a novel had no right being shoved. It lacks the focus, cohesiveness, character development, and sense of drama that Ender's Game had in spades, and is instead an overstuffed, navel-gazer of a boring novel. The character introductions read like an episode of America's Next Top Model where you spend most of the episode learning about characters that don't matter at all. It was a struggle to get through, and even more of a struggle to care.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-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
challenging
hopeful
reflective
sad
fast-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
It's a good read for Ender fans, but you don't have to read it to wrap up the Ender story from the previous books.
My Amazon review (yeah, I was pretty pissed):
Subj: Deeply alienated by Card's recent work.
A disappointing, socially unimaginative flattening of a character and a world I once loved very much. This novel was rife with ideologically and spiritually conservative addresses to the reader that seemed to diverge from the far ranging and broad discourses of the other books, at least the way I read them so many years ago. I felt alienated by the Wiggins of this novel, theirs and the narrator's presumptions about people's personalities and biological determinism, the absence in this world of any challenges to what seem like universally unquestioned ideas about family, gender, sexuality, social order, ethnicity and race--it's like ages of progressive thought on Earth were erased in order to create a universe where stereotypes turn out to be God's funny way of using DNA.
What the narrator of this novel would have you interpret as the human individual's inability to escape her or his own genetic make-up is truly, to my eyes, an author's inability to let his characters be anything but allegories for an outmoded, oppressive conservatism at a time when authors should be offering something much, much better than an intergalactic expansion of the middle-class Anglo-Christian exceptionalism that has done so much to hurt the world.
There's my elitist, queer-nerd, politically irked two cents. A dedicated reader of the Alvin, Homecoming and Ender series, as well as many stand-alone works, it pains me a little to say this will be my last Card novel for sure.
Subj: Deeply alienated by Card's recent work.
A disappointing, socially unimaginative flattening of a character and a world I once loved very much. This novel was rife with ideologically and spiritually conservative addresses to the reader that seemed to diverge from the far ranging and broad discourses of the other books, at least the way I read them so many years ago. I felt alienated by the Wiggins of this novel, theirs and the narrator's presumptions about people's personalities and biological determinism, the absence in this world of any challenges to what seem like universally unquestioned ideas about family, gender, sexuality, social order, ethnicity and race--it's like ages of progressive thought on Earth were erased in order to create a universe where stereotypes turn out to be God's funny way of using DNA.
What the narrator of this novel would have you interpret as the human individual's inability to escape her or his own genetic make-up is truly, to my eyes, an author's inability to let his characters be anything but allegories for an outmoded, oppressive conservatism at a time when authors should be offering something much, much better than an intergalactic expansion of the middle-class Anglo-Christian exceptionalism that has done so much to hurt the world.
There's my elitist, queer-nerd, politically irked two cents. A dedicated reader of the Alvin, Homecoming and Ender series, as well as many stand-alone works, it pains me a little to say this will be my last Card novel for sure.
I liked this book a lot better than the last of the Ender's Game series and a lot better than Shadows in Flight. It had more meat to the story and was enjoyable to read.
I don't know why there are so many negative reviews. I thought it was a nice visit to the Enderverse. I liked it. And I always feel like everyone's always so mean about Peter. Poor guy :( haha
adventurous
challenging
medium-paced
So I definitely read this out of the correct order so I had to go back and figure out what happened in Ender's Game.
I felt like this book was unnecessary and a tad tedious to the actual story but I still enjoyed it nonetheless. I liked that we saw more of Peter and Val's weird relationship. With her gone and traveling with Ender, Peter was alone and did ridiculous things. I did enjoy it showing that the parents are so much more than what was portrayed by Ender, Val and Peter. They were incredibly smart in their own right.
Quincy is a pretentious dick plain and simple and there is no real need to say anything else about that guy.
Ender I felt, even though we learn more about his character and who he is when he's young...I don't like who he is. He only sees people as pieces on a board he can play and I just feel that takes away from his humanness and makes him feel like a robot. He's also just has this, "better than thou" attitude about him. For example, when he meets with Verlomy (I don't remember how to spell her name) he shames her for wanting to get rid of Randall, the pain in the ass kid from her colony. He isn't the character from the other stories, he's an asshole. He's the guy that knows they're smarter than everyone else and let's no one forget but then has the nerve to be like, "well I'm not doing anything but saying the truth" I don't really like him anymore in this book.
And the whole thing with Randall and him being like a secret child was honestly the most annoying and repetitive storyline I've ever heard. Ender is so freaking annoying with his suicide mission and wanting to be like mightier than thou.
And he was pissing me off with Valentine. Like she knew what he was doing. Like there relationship is super weird in this book and I am not a fan. I am disappointed honestly, like I feel like it didn't make any of the characters more likeable or even humanize them. It made Ender seem more "god-like" than he actual was and introduced characters that really make no difference.
So in the whole span of things, in the Ender Universe, yes of course I wondered what Ender did during those years he was looking for a place for the new HIve Queen but I feel like the not knowing made the story better, it made Ender that much more mysterious of a character but still a character that was relatable and understanding of people and their circumstances. The Ender in this book was only looking at people as pawns. And maybe he was doing that in other books as well, but in this one, it was so much more prevalant that it took away from the good that was Ender.
Not horrible book but I don't think this book is needed nor do people need to read it for the original series.
I felt like this book was unnecessary and a tad tedious to the actual story but I still enjoyed it nonetheless. I liked that we saw more of Peter and Val's weird relationship. With her gone and traveling with Ender, Peter was alone and did ridiculous things. I did enjoy it showing that the parents are so much more than what was portrayed by Ender, Val and Peter. They were incredibly smart in their own right.
Quincy is a pretentious dick plain and simple and there is no real need to say anything else about that guy.
Ender I felt, even though we learn more about his character and who he is when he's young...I don't like who he is. He only sees people as pieces on a board he can play and I just feel that takes away from his humanness and makes him feel like a robot. He's also just has this, "better than thou" attitude about him. For example, when he meets with Verlomy (I don't remember how to spell her name) he shames her for wanting to get rid of Randall, the pain in the ass kid from her colony. He isn't the character from the other stories, he's an asshole. He's the guy that knows they're smarter than everyone else and let's no one forget but then has the nerve to be like, "well I'm not doing anything but saying the truth" I don't really like him anymore in this book.
And the whole thing with Randall and him being like a secret child was honestly the most annoying and repetitive storyline I've ever heard. Ender is so freaking annoying with his suicide mission and wanting to be like mightier than thou.
And he was pissing me off with Valentine. Like she knew what he was doing. Like there relationship is super weird in this book and I am not a fan. I am disappointed honestly, like I feel like it didn't make any of the characters more likeable or even humanize them. It made Ender seem more "god-like" than he actual was and introduced characters that really make no difference.
So in the whole span of things, in the Ender Universe, yes of course I wondered what Ender did during those years he was looking for a place for the new HIve Queen but I feel like the not knowing made the story better, it made Ender that much more mysterious of a character but still a character that was relatable and understanding of people and their circumstances. The Ender in this book was only looking at people as pawns. And maybe he was doing that in other books as well, but in this one, it was so much more prevalant that it took away from the good that was Ender.
Not horrible book but I don't think this book is needed nor do people need to read it for the original series.