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I have read Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, and Ender's Shadow. I am looking forward to finishing the Shadow (Shadow of the Hegemon and Shadow Puppets) series, but the Ender series seemed to be cut off. After Children of the Mind there is room for another addition to the series. The new and immediate threat of the descoladores is just way too much to leave hanging. Not to mention the newlyweds. It only seems right that it has a complete ending.
What do you think?
Posts: 29 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I disagree and feel that even "children of the mind" was an unnecessary addition to the story. The Ender series needs to be about Ender. His "Children" weren't nearly as interesting as the originals, both as versions of the siblings or as halves of the whole. I know that Speaker and Xenocide were as much or even more about those AROUND Ender but he was still the center of the story. I want more OSC books but I would rather see Alvin finished, a new book in the vein of "Enchantment" or "Homebody" or some such. Even though I enjoyed the Bean books to a degree, they are merely bonus points and to me not nearly as engaging as the first two books of the Ender series.
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OSC has announced his intention to write a book that takes place after Children of the Mind, in which one of Bean's children meets Nu-Peter.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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...Bean's children? Even if they don't carry through Bean's alteration, wouldn't they still die by then? Possibly a descendant of Bean?
Posts: 1831 | Registered: Jan 2003
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Oye.. - There is to be a link book that we won't be seeing for a lonnnng while that connects both quartet series, the Ender and Bean series.
Ender lived to reach his thousands.. I wouldn't put it past any of Bean's children to do so as well.
What's Proto-Peter doing in the Bean series now? he's getting a hang of his Hegemony.. and just like he said in Ender's Game, it was his desire to.. wait a second, let me grab the book just so I can be more worthy of your trust..
here's an excerpt from one of Peter's monologues:
quote: "...I want to accomplish something worthwhile. A Pax Americana through the whole world. So that when somebody else comes, after we beat the buggers, when somebody else comes to defeat us, they'll find we've already spread over a thousand worlds, we're at peace with ourselves and impossible to destroy. Do you understand? I want to save man kind from self-destruction."
This is from the usual paper back of Ender's Game, pgs. 131-132 Chapter 9, Locke and Demosthenes.
As you can see in Speaker for the Dead and so on from then, that Peter was successfull. And in the Bean series, Peter is going to reach a peak in his career, and Bean is going to have children.. Who better to send off into space then some of the most potentially brilliant humans in the world? - I have a feeling alot of our questions will be answered in the next book, our theories will be dashed and maybe some will come close.. but anywho.. I say the best form of action we can take is to buckle up and go along for the drive until the fourth book in the Bean series comes out.. and /then/ we'll debate our theories on how things are going to work in the link book.
I love Nu-Peter and Wang-mu.. my favorite duo.. too bad it'll be such a long wait..
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I'm interested in what happends after Children of the Mind. I disagree that the series should have ended after Xenocide. That book ends basically in a cliffhanger with the whole fleet heading to the piggies' planet to blow it up. Now if OSC had resolved that particular plot point within Xenocide itself, I'd agree that the series could have ended there, but I still wouldn't say it should have ended there.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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I hear what you are saying about Xenocide, but while it was great and did have a cliffhanger of an ending, I thought the main character (Ender, after all) had really reached his usefulness as a character. In fact, he was already a side-lined character in that book compared to the first two. Which is fine, because I really liked the stuff with the OCD planet and stuff. Maybe I would have preferred a different book than Children. That might be my problem. I was never a fan of the whole jumping into some magical nether world to create a new Peter and Valentine and all that. Smacks of Star Trekky plot device than good storytelling device. There was plenty of great story with how each world in the mix of worlds is so different depending on the culture that originally founded it or how they were created to manipulate generations of people, etc. THAT was neat and far reaching. The whole thing about "what is alien? What is human?" was great with the Piggies, Descolada, Buggers, etc. was also great but beyond that, it seemed like a loose plot string in search of resolution.
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If The Lusitania fleet ws a drop off then the descoladores is even moreso a drop off. I mean there are so many thing to do in the next book. All the relationships need to be advanced (marrying then killing off the series wasn't a good way to end), Quara needs to open herself to Wang-Mu (giant forshadow when Wang-Mu thought about that after talking with Quara at the end), the descoladores need to be learned about and have some kind of relationship with the humans, and when I heard about Bean's kids coming I thought it was a great addition.
Posts: 29 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Doesn't he have to write Shadow of The Giant and finish off the Bean sage before all of this? That would make sense to me.
Posts: 1401 | Registered: Jun 2004
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Personally, I think the SftD should have been the last book about Ender, proper. Xenocide (or its imaginary equivalent) should have taken place after the resolution of the Lusitania events.
Ender got his redemption at that point, and he basically became a plot device. Less a person, and more if a wampeter.
This is, of course, all in hindsight. At the time, I was psyched about more books.
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Bok, you said it better than I did. Totally right on. Even if I don't get Wampa Eater.
Ender became a plot device (and his two halves even moreso) in the later books. And I also agree that while I loved Xenocide, it was because it had so many neat concepts but none really needed to be in the context of an Ender book to work. Oh well...it is cliche to say, but even average OSC is so much better than a lot of other stuff out there.
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