Ender in Exile Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B001L4EDVQ | Format: EPUB
Ender in Exile Description
Orson Scott Card returns to his best-selling series with a new Ender novel.
At the close of Ender's Game, Andrew Wiggin - called Ender by everyone - is told that he can no longer live on Earth, and he realizes that this is the truth. He has become far more than just a boy who won a game: he is the Savior of Earth, a hero, a military genius whose allegiance is sought by every nation of the newly shattered Earth Hegemony.
He is offered the choice of living in isolation on Eros, at one of the Hegemony's training facilities, but instead the 12-year-old chooses to leave his home world and begin the long relativistic journey out to the colonies. With him went his sister Valentine, and the core of the artificial intelligence that would become Jane.
The story of those years has never been told...until now.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 13 hours and 47 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: November 11, 2008
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B001L4EDVQ
This book is more properly considered part of the Ender's Shadow series, rather than a sequel to Ender's Game. It is stylistically like the Shadow series, features many of the same characters, and ties up loose ends from those books.
Card has found a clever way to do that, while centering the story on Ender and Valentine. Readers of Ender's Game will recall that Ender and Valentine left on the first colony ship because there were some good reasons Ender could not return to Earth. This book picks up just before that voyage begins.
However, that voyage takes decades because of time dilation. So the events of the Ender's Shadow series all unfold during the voyage.
That allows a different slant on those happenings, while also resolving much of what happened to Ender during that period. Ender still has some life issues to face, and this novel shows us how he faces them.
I don't recommend this as anyone's introduction to the world of Ender. Read Ender's Game for sure before this. I'd also recommend at least the first couple of books of the Ender's Shadow series as prerequisites. The more of the series you've read the better you'll lke this, though I don't think you needed to read all the way through that series to enjoy this book. (By the way, it's unnecessary to read Speaker for the Dead and its sequels.
Ender's Game is my favorite novel, so read this review with that understanding. Ender's Game is not the best novel ever written, but the one I enjoyed the most because I could relate viscerally to Ender. This book doesn't reach anything close to that standard, but I found myself reading it in one day until 1 a.m., unable to sleep without finishing it. But then again, I'm an Ender lifer.
For starters, don't bother reading this if you haven't read Ender's Game and at least Ender's Shadow and Speaker for the Dead. Those are the three essential books in the Ender's Game pantheon, with the rest tending to get progressively lame. (Children of the Mind ending up in bigtime lame-o territory, sadly. Card talks in the afterward of this book about how he didn't bother to reread his old books, and I can see why! PLEASE, rewrite Xenocide and Children of the MInd! Or pay another writer to redo them.)
Back to the review: For Ender fans, Ender in Exile is a must read -- there are simply too many expository tidbits and loose ends getting tied. But the plotline is very thin. The new characters are garden variety Card staples -- young girl dealing with overbearing mother, adult who underestimates Ender (ENDER!) even after he's saved humanity, yada yada yada. Ender himself is always interesting, and keeps you reading for more. But Valentine is relegated to a bit part after a promising start. Graff makes several appearances as a sort of Father of Humanity Demigod which proves a convenient way for Card to chew through pages and adds some convenient act of god/act of Graff plot twists. But all of the characters seem like chess pieces in a puzzle of the Enderverse rather than having much in the way of depth or resonance.
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