Ender in Exile
by Orson Scott Card
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.40 You Save: $22.55 (87%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.23 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Ender in Exile
Book Review: intriguing entry
Summary: 5 Stars
The third Formic War ended thanks to Andrew "Ender" Wiggins who believed he was playing a computer simulation game at Battle School instead of actually killing the Queens who gathered on a single planet. With their deaths, their soldiers, workers, and pupae died; Ender was responsible for the genocide of a race. He also killed two bullies in self defense, but the leaders of earth's nations do not want him residing in the United States because he could become a weapon that could destroy their own country. His brother Peter wants to be the ruler of a one world government, but his sister Valentine decides to accompany her younger brother to prove her sense of freedom.
The Formic Worlds are colonized by Earthlings since they remain in a pristine state. Ender decides to go to Planet Shakespeare where he hopes to learn why the Queens gathered in one place so that they could be killed. He is to be the governor as a hero to those who remained and the new colonists. The Commander of the ship taking him to Shakespeare wants to be the power behind Ender's government or to find a way to exile him back to earth. Ender, a thirteen years old boy with a brilliant mind prevents the coup before it begins by creating a better standard of living for the people. Ender, in his spare time, digs up Formic artifacts seeking clues to the Queens gathering.
Ender is intelligent and compassionate yet in many ways he is also tortured because of his wisdom and passion. His parents will not communicate with him and he rejects Battle School as he has to emotionally deal with real deaths he indirectly caused and not simulated gaming deaths. Less action than previous tales in the Ender saga, ENDER IN EXILE is much more cerebral as Orson Scott Card takes his fans deep into the heart and soul of a young boy forced to grow up too fast.
Harriet Klausner
Book Review: Good, but could have been better.
Summary: 4 Stars
I enjoyed the book overall. I'm always hungry for more from the Ender universe. I only had two real beefs:
First, too many of the characters were flat. I had a hard time emphathizing with Valentine, for instance, which was not an issue in other novels. She didn't act right, say the things needed to make her "real". She was just a prop for Ender in this book.
Likewise, Arkanian Delphiki (Achilles) was unbelievable as a character. He was a supposed genius who acted like a simpleton or dupe every time he appeared. Also Admiral Morgan, though I suppose he was supposed to be a bit of an empty uniform any way.
Second, and this probably is the cause of #1, Card tried to cram too much into one novel. The dust jacket actually makes it appear that the primary storyline is what happens on Shakespeare and Ganges. (Frankly whoever wrote the dust jacket synopsis should be sacked as it blatantly incorrect.) In reality, about half the book takes place before he ever reaches a colony world, and his visit to Ganges and the "showdown" with a "brilliant young colonist who is out to destroy him" takes up only 2 chapters.
The Ganges storyline, frankly, felt contrived and tacked on. It could have been a novel unto itself if he'd built in some depth to the planet's culture and characters.
Card should have chopped some of the subplots out (especially the Ganges storyline) completely and focused on the trip and Shakespeare, using the time to develop the characters more fully and focus more on building a real Valentine that we could relate to.
Overall, a good and satisfying Ender/Bean book. It did a good job of tying up many loose ends (perhaps tried to tie up too many?) and helped us to see the transition beginning from Ender Wiggin to Speaker for the Dead.
Book Review: Unnecessary, uninspired sequel
Summary: 2 Stars
The whole way through, it feels like the author is just going back to the well. Ender and Valentine spend almost the entire novel in transit aboard a ship, ruminating while Valentine prepares to write less-important histories than the ones Ender will eventually write to change the world, interacting with a few throwaway characters, and sniping at each other. Valentine's likeability erodes as the novel wears on and Ender becomes irritatingly aloof.
Additionally, the interactions between Ender and Valentine occasionally don't feel right: the aim was apparently to make Valentine into a maternal figure, but there are moments when she seems less like a friend or mother and more like a jealous lover.
The heavy-handed conservative moralism that you occasionally see in his religious books (and which is appropriate there) also creeps into this book, too. The result is that some of the sense of wonder and perspective that characterize his best books is diminished, and the reader senses more of the attitude that shows up in Mr. Card's opinion columns. No one disputes that he is entitled to insert himself into his books, but in my experience reading them, it detracts from my engagement with the story.
Mr. Card once announced that if he could write another book that sold as well as Ender's Game, that is all he would write, and this book bears that out. Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Ender's Shadow were among some of the best books I've ever read: smart, engrossing page-turners that lit up my imagination. This book (and the same goes for all but the first entries in the Shadow series) is not in their league and is not really worth the read unless you are an "Ender otaku" (like I am). These unnecessary sequels dilute the quality of the series.
Book Review: loosely linked short stories about Ender
Summary: 2 Stars
My wife got me this book for Christmas. And while I was reading it she kept asking how it was. I kept describing it as "It's OK". After finishing it, that's still how I feel. It was OK. Nothing I'd recommend to anybody else.
One thing I did like was that Ender was "Ender" - the magically gifted kid who understands people and overcomes obstacles with his incredible ingenuity. Much better than in Xenocide and Children of the Mind when Ender is a stupid useless person who eventually disintegrates into a ball of dust (sorry for the spoiler, but you won't want to read them anyway.) It was fun to read about what Ender was thinking and how he overcame the difficult situations.
What I didn't like is that the story wasn't really a story. There was no buildup, no climax, no conclusion. It was more just a bunch of random short stories about "things that happened between the first book and the second book". It was just a mishmash of different people - a little bit of semi-interesting planet exploration (gold bugs), a little bit of the colonists (fairy people), a little bit of Ender's Shadow (Achilles), a little bit of Peter, a little bit of Graff. But it wasn't really interesting how it was all tied together. I was almost dreading each new chapter, because I knew I'd have a bunch of new people and a new plotline that I'd have to dive into that didn't really have much to do with the previous chapter.
I love Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, and I mildly enjoyed the Ender's Shadow series. So I'm glad I read this book. But it's not something I'll probably ever reread. I would suggest checking it out of the library instead of spending money to add to your home book collection.
Book Review: Best to reread Ender's Game first if it's been awhile since you did...
Summary: 4 Stars
It was through the Twitterverse that I found out that Orson Scott Card had written another installment of Ender Wiggin's life in the book Ender In Exile. This is described as "the lost years", the time after Ender left battle school and started to come to grips with exactly what he had done in terms of destroying an entire species. While I liked Exile for what it was, I realize that this would have been best read shortly after finishing (or rereading) Ender's Game. I felt the same way here as I felt after reading many of the follow-up novels in the series... too much time had passed for me to remember the nuances of the original story line, and I didn't get as much out of it as I could have.
Ender's main quest in Exile is to understand the Formic race, and to figure out why they seemingly let him destroy their species in the Formic War. While he can understand that they were bent on the destruction of earth, he feels there was something more there, something they were trying to communicate before they were annihilated. To learn as much as he can, he decides to move to a new colony on a planet once inhabited by formics. It's there that he finds the answers he's looking for, and it also shapes the path that he wants the rest of his life to take.
I like the way that Card adds so much texture to the person that Ender has become. The interplay between him and his sister Valentine is excellent, and probably kept me more interested in the book than I otherwise would have been. This is definitely a welcome addition to the Ender series, and does help to fill out the story. I just wish I had reread Ender's Game before starting this one, as it would have helped with some of the context.