So I just finished Xenocide, and finished Speaker for the Dead a month or two ago. I remember the XKCD about it (see below) and I am curious what other people's thoughts are. Its not really fair to think of it in the same realm as Ender's Game, so I didn't put that one in there to compare with. Anyways, thoughts?
Edit: Crap, I forgot to put in a poll, is there a way to do that after the fact?
I believe most of those are on the Shadow side of the series, which are great books, but wholly other than the Ender side. Also, just so I can state my case, I may go so far as to say Xenocide is better. Its a hard statement to make, as you can't have Xenocide without Speaker, but Xenocide was far more engaging on a level you don't get a lot from Sci fi that often.
I loved the parts of the story that followed Gloriously Bright--that was some amazing storytelling, all the way to the end.
The parts of the story on Lusitania were a bit more iffy, with pretty much everyone in the von Hesse family acting like complete idiots in the face of complete destruction. It's like Card wanted the story to have more conflict, and so he decided to have everyone act as irrationally as possible. This isn't completely a flaw--it actually does a good job of expanding on the dysfunctional family that was portrayed in speaker for the dead--but it was taken to such an extreme that it really started to bug me.
But what really turned me off was the nonsensical solution that they found, which solved everything in a single go. It was described in the book, quite seriously, as such:
"We've discovered the illuminating principle that wishing makes it so and all living creatures pop out of nowhere whenever they're needed"
It wasn't quite Deus ex Machina since the reasons behind this solution were shown as the path to its discovery slowly unfolded, but it just left a bad taste in my mouth.
Maybe part of the reason I didn't like it was because I kept rolling my eyes at how Card basically took Mormon theological ideas and justified them with pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo. I probably would have liked the book a lot better if I hadn't noticed that.
As is, though, I had no desire to read Children of the Mind after I finished Xenocide.
---------- Post added at 05:31 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:30 AM ----------
"Eye of the World" by Robert Jordan and "The Wizard's First Rule" by Terry Goodkind are both pretty self contained, despite being the first novels in 10+ novel mega-series. Later novels in both series don't really have endings though.
If you like short stories, "I, Robot" by Asimov is pretty good, and almost completely, but not entirely, different from the movie by the same name.
Xenocide kind of drops off nowhere unless you then read Children of the Mind. Unfortunately Xenocide and Children of the Mind are so dumb and convoluted at times... Ending to it all is beautiful, and one part of Xenocide is one of the few times I've gotten misty-eyed from reading a book (I can count those incidents on one hand), but it's still just garbage compared to Ender's Game.
Speaker for the Dead is interesting, and at least not dumb, but it's less the second to Ender's Game and more of a first to its own trilogy... which leads to Xenocide and Children of the Mind's silliness.
Honestly, CG, you read Ender's Game, and you'll get more from just reading that again than reading any of the sequels.
Maybe part of the reason I didn't like it was because I kept rolling my eyes at how Card basically took Mormon theological ideas and justified them with pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo. I probably would have liked the book a lot better if I hadn't noticed that.
He does basically the same thing in his Homecoming series. Card seems to have a habit of writing 2 or 3 good sci-fi books than filling the rest of the series with Mormon stuff.
For the record, I have no problem with science fiction (or any fiction) that features/promotes the philosophies or teachings of specific world-views and religions. For instance, there's an undercurrent of Taoism in Cowboy Bebop, and I loved the crap out of that series. And there's plenty of Mormon ideology that can be found in Speaker for the Dead and Ender's Game, which didn't bug me at all.
The problem I have with Xenocide is the way that the pseudoscience Card made up was pretty much straight Mormon theology with weird words applied.
It felt amateurish. It read like an LDS fanfic. It reminded me of the Left Behind series.
For the record, I have no problem with science fiction (or any fiction) that features/promotes the philosophies or teachings of specific world-views and religions. For instance, there's an undercurrent of Taoism in Cowboy Bebop, and I loved the crap out of that series.
Hey, I'm a rabid-and-screaming atheist, but I still dig Stranger in a Strange Land like a backhoe. That book's the reason I spent a few years as a pantheist before I realized I was just grafting Special™ onto the real world, an' I just went whole hog atheist...
Still, I take that book off the shelf every year or two an' go through it again; Heinlein rocks, and that book's pretty bodacious...even if there are, like, two lines in there that are blatantly homophobic. I'm just sayin'...
Fuck yea it's the best series ever. Sin all your life and then have all the 'goody two-shoes' teleported away while you then wreak God's vengeance onto his foes. Slaughter all who oppose him to gain his acceptance and love. Crush his enemies and show them no mercy so that your offering of blood may open the gates of Heaven to you. Teach them our God is a spiteful and avenging one and we are made in his image.
