posted
I'm a new reader of OSC and am just completing Ender's Game. Can anyone please direct me to a listing of the Ender's books in the order that they should be read?
posted
Well, there's release order and chronological order. Following Ender is Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. Then there is the Shadow series. It's any way you want it.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
If after having finished EG you're more into Ender and Val, go for Speaker. Shadow Saga is more about his friends and politics. If you choose this path, go for Ender's Shadow.
This path was appointed to you and if you do not find the way, no-one will...
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posted
If I were to read the books over again, I'd go in this order:
Ender's Game Speaker for the Dead (an excellent book, but very much different from EG; a great followup) Ender's Shadow (return to Battle School!) Shadow of the Hegemon Shadow Puppets Shadow of the Giant Ender in Exile Speaker for the Dead again (because it's just that good) Xenocide Children of the Mind Shadows in Flight
This is approximately chronological order, but because Speaker for the Dead was intended as the followup to Ender's Game, it's probably good to read that next.
Speaker for the Dead can be skipped the first time if you like the characters from Battle School and can wait to see what happens to Ender himself. Ender is a fundamentally different character after the climax of Ender's Game, but for a good reason that's spoiler-related.
I actually read Speaker for the Dead before Ender's Game, so I know that it can stand alone pretty well. However, I think someone who reads Ender's Game first might notice a structural shift in the story that probably feels jarring (though I wouldn't know). Instead of kids in a space-station military academy training to fight alien invaders, the plot becomes about a eulogist helping to heal a Brazilian colony that lives alongside tribal native aliens. A very different story, but a very good one.
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posted
Did anyone else really not like Shadows in Flight and Ender in Exile? They're the only two from either series that I disliked. They felt phoned in.
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I really enjoyed them both still actually, and I'm currently reading and really enjoying Earth Unaware. But I really just love the universe and mythology, so I may not be the best judge.
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posted
Thanks everyone. This is very helpful. I'm quite curious to see how OSC develops the characters and the story Posts: 3 | Registered: Jul 2012
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There are also a number of comic book and graphic novel adaptations of the various novels and short stories released by Marvel Comics. As well as a couple of prequel graphic novels co-written by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston such as Formic Wars: Burning Earth and Formic Wars: Silent Strike. The prequel graphic novels have also been expanded into a novel entitled Earth Unaware.
posted
I can't really pick my fave OSC between Wyrms, Treason, EG and Speaker. The great thing is, I don't have to!
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posted
I am hoping Speaker gets me more engaged really soon because so far I'm not seeing the method to the madness here. This work is very different from what I expected.
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posted
I really enjoy the expansion of the mythology detailed in the book, and I really love the psychology elements at play in the Path storyline.
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posted
If we have to chose our favorites, I would have to go Ender's Game, Treason, then Enchanted. Ender's Shadow should be in there somewhere as well.
Posts: 1789 | Registered: Jul 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Evie3217: If we have to chose our favorites, I would have to go Ender's Game, Treason, then Enchanted. Ender's Shadow should be in there somewhere as well.
quote:Originally posted by SteveRogers: I really enjoy the expansion of the mythology detailed in the book, and I really love the psychology elements at play in the Path storyline.
It certainly beats the mess that is CoftM. The bits with the Somoan mythologies and related research porn was painful.
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posted
Children of the Mind, despite the fact that 1) it's basically Xenocide: Part 2, and 2) I cannot figure out how to describe it without spoilers or making it sound incredibly weird, is my favorite of the first three sequels. What can I say - I love Jane, and this book gives her a (thing I won't say for fear of spoiling new readers).
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posted
I actually never really understood the apparent hate for Children of the Mind. I enjoyed it just as much as the other sequels.
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quote:I actually never really understood the apparent hate for Children of the Mind.
I find it a horrible book by any imaginable metric: plot, characterization, setting, theme, meaning, not pissing on past books of the series...
"Speaker for the Dead" is one of my all-time favourite SF novels, but "Children of the Mind" is one of my all-time loathed ones.
Posts: 676 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:I actually never really understood the apparent hate for Children of the Mind.
I find it a horrible book by any imaginable metric: plot, characterization, setting, theme, meaning, not pissing on past books of the series...
When I read it, I didn't see much reason to complain about any of these things. I thought the plot was interesting and suspenseful. I liked the characters. The setting was no different than Speaker and Xenocide.
posted
I didn't. At that point, it was the first book by OSC I didn't care for as much. I didn't hate it, but it felt.... repetitious, and a bit forced.
Then again, I may have just been tired of the setting, as I reread the whole series front to back before reading CotM as it had been years since I had read any of them.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Forgive me if my memory is off, it has been awhile, but what I dislike about CotM was...
**spoilers**
...Ender's wife being a unreasonable b***h about almost everything, and Ender acting like some kind of martyr saint and not having any of the personality or fire that made him interesting in the first place...and then of course he dies...and we get left with Peter...and the disappointing cliff hanging style ending about the Dycolators or whatever their names are.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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I thought Ender's death was an earned moment. But I know I'm in the minority when it comes to enjoying those books. And, yes, Stone_Wolf_, it ended with a cliffhanger regarding teh Descaldores, but that mystery is what has kept me hopeful about the next book Shadows Alive.
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quote:I thought the plot was interesting and suspenseful.
It's all random and disconnected, to the point I would barely call it "plot". They seek the center of political power -- and it all effectively amounts to nothing, because it's not political influence that saves either Jane or Lusitania.
The Descoladoras aren't significant to the above plot either. There's no real reason that they ought meet up with them now -- and indeed the author decides that we don't need meet them after all.
And the various romance subplots are disconnected with both of the above elements. Unlike Libo/Novinha and Miro/whatshername and even Jane/Ender in the first book which all directly connected to how every story element connected with each other.
So basically there exists no plot. Just some discussion pieces; some quasi-philosophical, some quasi-political, some quasi-mystical; tied together by Jane teleporting people from place to place.
quote:The setting was no different than Speaker and Xenocide.
No, it was not. Speaker didn't behave as if the most exciting part of the setting was that OMG there exist a Norway-styled planet, and a Brazil-styled planet. There existed a whole new planet with a really amazing new life-form, the piggies. We also see elements of how the whole of human societies with its faster-than-light communication but sublight travel is set up; hints of how religions and different cultures are dealt with by the Starways Congress, etc.
Children of the Mind on the other hand is *all* about how there's a Japan-style planet, and a Samoa-style planet -- each of which are effectively represented by a single "powerful man", and some discussions in a single household of each planet; and EVERYTHING about these planets is that one of them is Japan-styled and the other is Samoa-styled.
Oh, joy, that's why I read SF, to see some Japanese and Samoan stereotypes.
Strangely enough we don't see the America-styled planet where everyone wears cowboys hat and has duels under the noon sun.
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posted
We'll just have to agree to disagree. Your primary complaints are all things which are objective, and my praise would all be objective too.
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