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So I fell in love with Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind sometime in my teenage years, and have been obssessed with Ender and Mr. Card's writings ever since. The Ender series stated above are my all-time favorite books in the world! In fact, I am 9 months pregnant with my 3rd child, and if it's a boy we are naming him Ender, and if it's a girl we are leaning toward naming her Valentine. It feels like I know Ender on such a personal level, like he's as a member of my family, and truly wish I could have a chat with him.
Anyway... to get to the point of this post now. I just finished Ender's Game again and decided I would read the series according to the timeline of the story. So I picked up Ender in Exile next (I've also read the Shawdow series but there was just too much about world politics to keep me interested. I read the series once and I'll never read them again. All the politics were a bit boring - nothing like the Ender's series that is so thought provoking on EVERY level!).
As I'm reading Ender in Exile, there are a few problems between Ender's Game and Ender in Exile. Maybe the next time either is published it can be fixed?
#1 In Ender's Game, when Ender is taken back to earth to the lake, and Valentine comes to visit Ender and Valentine have this conversation:
"I've been learning about preemptive strategies.I've very good. No one ever beat me. I'm the best soilder they ever had."
"Who would expect less?" she said. "You're a Wiggin."
"Whatever that means" he said.
"It means you are going to make a difference in the world." And she told him what she and Peter were doing.
Alright.... so the problem here is that after reading this and the rest of their conversation, it seems clear to me that Ender understands that Valentine is Demosthenes. During this conversation, Mr. Card does not come out and say that name, but they talk about what Val is doing with Peter, trying to take over the world.
Then we go to Ender in Exile. In Chapter 4 when Graff and Ender are talking about going to the new colony, Graff supposidly surprises Ender that Valentine is Demosthenes. It's a very touching scene where Ender ends up crying because he realizes Valentine is coming too, but I couldn't get past the fact that Ender already knew that Valentine was Demosthenes! Even if Valentine didn't perfectly explain that she was Demosthenes, Ender is obviously smart enough to figure it out after he spent time on the nets.
Personally, I would prefer Ender's Game to be changed to match the way that Ender in Exile is written. It's much better to find out as a surprise that Valentine is Demosthenes.
#2 Problem - The way Ender finds out Valentine is coming to the colony with him.
In Ender's Game, Ender is repairing a spaceship when someone tels him there is someone to see him. In Ender in Exile, in Chapter 4 again, he's in Graff's office chatting with him when he brings Valentine in. Ender in Exile is much more dramatic and I like that version better, but I was so distracted with the stories not matching up I found myself just being annoyed.
#3 Valentine in Ender's Game tells Ender that how she got Peter to agree for her and Ender to leave earth was through manipulation of information about Peter:
"I showed Peter all the evidence that I had assembled, enough to prove in the eyes of the public that he was a psychotic killer. It included full-color pictures of tortured squirrels and some of the monitor videos of the way he treated you. It took some work to get it all together, but by the time he saw it, he was willing to gie me waht I wanted. What I wanted was your freedom and mine."
However, in Chapter 3 of Ender in Exile, when Valentine lets Peter know that both of them will be leaving, that she will not be Demosthenes anymore, they have a great discussion - very entertaining, and it ends well with an inside joke between them, kind of like saying although it's not what Peter wanted, he's ok with it. In this story, she never brings up any kind of videos or pictures of Peter looking like a sociopath. I did like that Valentine just took over Demosthenies without Peters knowing though. I liked how it unfolded in Ender in Exile. I just hope that you can match up the story in Ender's Game too.
At this point, those are the only problems I've seen. I'm not sure if it's worth fixing or not, but as a detial-oriented person I would sure appreciate it!
Thank you Mr. Card for Ender and all of these amazing stories about him. How he teaches us all the value of the individual, tolerance, love. He's an incredible person.
I was reading one of Mr. Card's short stories where we first meet Jane. My oh my that would be amazing to have that story further developed. Especially how we find Jane so advanced in the future, to have her history better told, especially when Ender first understands who she is, that she has been watching over his money, and she has been watching over Valentine's Demosthones character so nobody elese can try and write for Demosthones. This would help enhance Jane's story even further in the last 3 Ender books. In reading these books, you find yourself loving Jane, as much as Valentine and Ender. It's so facinating to think of her as a computer system that turns into a sentient being. Amazing...
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From the discussions I've seen here before, the consensus seems to be that OSC is basically telling the "new" stories like EiE from the perspective he wants to tell them now and with the storylines behind them that he wants to see now, with only minor regard for what the storyline was 20-30 years ago. Essentially, he's aware of the inconsistencies but just doesn't worry about them enough to want to change the stories he's written now.
(The EiE inconsistencies do seem to be the ones that get people the most riled up, but for my money, the biggest inconsistencies he's introduced to the Enderverse so far are in the First Formic War books.)
Posts: 124 | Registered: Jun 2013
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Also, in Ender's Game Alive, he worked a lot of the small changes into the story. Which is why I really hope he reconsiders doing more audio dramas (hint, hint Posts: 428 | Registered: Nov 2006
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