I have just finished Ender in Exile and am rather confused by it. Not by any sort of consistency issues but by characterization and style.
For the first half of the book Ender's dialogue and actions seemed quite strange to me until I realized that somewhere along the way he had turned into Bean. What he said, the way he said it, everything said BEAN to me in the aforetyped capital letters. It wasn't until he landed on Shakespeare that he actually seemed to become Ender again.
Even the style of the story seemed to mesh more with the style of the Bean books, more so than any of the Ender ones.
Ender's Game (while one of my favorite books)I feel is the best out of all the books in the series. Is this because it's merely the first? I don't think so. EG concentrates mostly on, yep, you guessed it Ender! The story is about Ender. The rest of the series isn't about Ender rather about situations in which Ender is in. There's nothing wrong with this as I enjoyed the rest of the series and maybe writing another book so closely about Ender would not be possible.
However I assumed that Ender in Exile would be more close to home with the first EG but this is not the case. In fact it seemed like Ender was barely in the book for the first half.
My biggest problem with the story however was how trivial it all seemed. In EG he's brought to the brink of his physical and psychological breaking point while training in order to save the Earth from destruction only to learn he had been fighting a war the whole time. In the remaining series he is trying to save another planet and another sentient race from destruction while discovering the nature of souls and space travel.
So the question is where do you go from there? I don't know but this wasn't it. His main antagonist for most of the book is an admiral who vacillates between being paranoid and kind of a dick to "just some guy" so much so that Ender even comments along the lines of "well he's not such a bad guy." Not to mention the fact that the seemingly all knowing Graff some how messes up on this big time by putting Ender with such an admiral in the first place when the rest of the IF is prostrating themselves at Ender's feet.
So Ender's main problem is maneuvering around this kind of a bad but not really guy, who really offers no realistic threat, which he easily does in .2 seconds. From what the other Ender books are about this is along the same lines as taking a nice stroll through a park on a segway.
Then in a very rushed feeling ending, Ender confronts the missing child of Bean an is able to defeat him in this time .9 seconds by getting beat up and saying, your Beans kid, thus undoing 16 years of psychological behavior, conditioning, etc etc... Just to have a feel good ending and a strong moral,ethical ending/point/theme?
And the whole Ender saying blah blah blah AND BEAN, every chance he got seemed way to over the top and noticeable. Yes we get it, you want to tie the stories together.
AND the whole babies thing is getting so apparent, it really needs to stop. YES we get it, its great being a dad and having kids is a wonderful experience and some people view that as the most important part of life. That's great but please stop beating us to death with it. It was okay in the Ender books and really picks up steam in Bean (though it makes a little bit more sense given Bean's impending mortality and I was wasn't really annoyed with it until a second reading of the series) but it was just ridiculous in this book.
It seemed almost like the story for Ender in Exile was created and then afterwards a moral point or theme was implemented as opposed to it flowing naturally from the story.
Anyways I was just all around disappointed Posts: 1 | Registered: Jun 2009
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posted
So you're saying that the author's most recent work is more like his other recent works than with a work from the early part of his career. That's not very surprising.
quote:My biggest problem with the story however was how trivial it all seemed. In EG he's brought to the brink of his physical and psychological breaking point while training in order to save the Earth from destruction only to learn he had been fighting a war the whole time. In the remaining series he is trying to save another planet and another sentient race from destruction while discovering the nature of souls and space travel.
I don't see how that's avoidable in a book like this. If what Ender did during this period of time was universe or soul-changing in the way the events in the other Enders books were, they would surely have been mentioned in the the books that happen chronologically after these events. They have to be relatively trivial in order to fit into the series at all.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Avoidable in the sense that perhaps an author need not have written it... Perhaps it could have been avoided in that way. But to be honest I'd be happy with more books if they lived up to the standard of EG and SftD. I don't think it's that unfair to say that this particular book, somewhat unlike many of the others, does not stand up alone. EG, ES, and SftD are good enough to stand alone- that's quite an accomplishment.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Was Ender different in the 'Ender in Exile' book than he was in the previous books? Of course he was, but, as always, Ender is playing a strategy. He can't be the same person he was while in Battle School or they way he was while on Eros. Because, those old strategies won't work in his new situation.
Trapped on a ship with a commanding Admiral who has high ambitions that include either controlling Ender or eliminating him, Ender must therefore play his cards very close to the chest. He has to seem completely non-threating for the entire voyage if he has any hope of actually taking over the colony without interference from the commander of the ship.
So, we see a very passive and docile Ender during the voyage. But the minute they touch ground we see the very bold Ender, who has been playing a deep strategy all along. He has manipulated and controlled all the events the whole time. He has made himself seem a weak and easy target for Admiral Morgan. That made Morgan overconfident, and that further made Morgan underestimate Ender.
And in a battle of war or a battle of wits, the one thing you do not want to do is underestimate Ender. Just ask the Buggers.
As to the latter part of the book, in the confrontation with Achilles, I think we are seeing the same thing. Ender is playing a dark and dangerous 'all or nothing' strategy. He is putting himself at risk, as all soldiers must do in all war, but he is doing it in a calculated way.
In the war with the Buggers, Ender played a deep strategy, that only he understood. In the war with Admiral Morgan, Ender was also playing a deep strategy that was beyond anyone's comprehension until he pulled it off. In his war with Achilles, again a deep and subtle strategy that only he understood until it was done.
It seems to be the same Ender in each story line, just playing a different strategy to fit the circumstances. A good commander can adapt to changing conditions, and that's what Ender did.
Same old Ender in my eyes.
Am I saying there is nothing to criticize in this book? Not at all, I can find things to criticize in all the books. But, that said, I'm satisfied with the book because it gave me another chance to spend time with Ender. Another chance to see deeper into his life, deeper into his person, deeper into his motivations and psychology. And that keeps me more than satisfied.
posted
I agree with the fact that the points in this book had to be trivial. Card couldn't have put some HUGE event in the book because none of the other books would have mentioned it until Shadow's in Flight, some 3000 years later; there would be no point to it then. Although he did have the whole issue as to how Ender became the Xenocide. Was that not important?
Posts: 16 | Registered: Mar 2009
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