Titles: Xenocide and Children of the Mind
Author: Orson Scott Card
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 608 and 384
Rating (out of 5 stars): **
Reviewed by: Ben
Description: These are the last two books in the "Ender Quartet." In these two books, Ender has settled down with a family, but serious trials still await him and those he loves. Congress has issued and order to destroy the planet he lives, there is an adaptive virus loose that threatens to destroy all of humanity, and war is threatening to break out between humans and the 3 other sentient species they have discovered. Xenocide and Children of the Mind chronicle Ender's quest to save humanity one last time.
Thoughts: I'm reviewing these two books together because they are really one long book that Card broke up into two because of length. Really there is hardly and ending at all at the end of Xenocide, so you pretty much have to read Children of the Mind if you are going to read book 3. Anyway, I figured that I had already read books 1 & 2, so I might as well finish off the series. Unfortunately, I was somewhat disappointed in these last two books. I'm generally not a big sci-fi reader, so maybe I just lost interest, but I didn't really feel like these two books captured me nearly as much as the first two. My biggest complaint is that both Xenocide and Children of the Mind had far too many insurmountable obstacles that Ender and his gang had to overcome. I felt like in real life there would have been absolutely no chance for anything to work out, and yet Card simply tied up all the loose ends in the last few pages of the last book. I guess I felt like it was all too neat and tidy of a conclusion--there wasn't enough suffering or something was missing. Also, books 3 & 4 got even more science-fictiony (e.g. teleportation, people possessing 3 bodies at once, etc.) which turned out to be a bit much for my taste. However, rating the series overall, I really enjoyed it much more than expected and would recommend it to anyone with a science fiction bent. Speaker for the Dead (book 2) was the best of the quartet, followed by Ender's Game (book 1).
Disclaimer: A few light swear words, nothing more.
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