"Children of the Mind (Ender's Saga #4)" by Orson Scott Card, 1996

"Children of the Mind (Ender's Saga #4)" by Orson Scott Card, 1996


Children of the Mind is the fourth installment and conclusion in the Ender's Game series. Originally the second half of Xenocide, the third installment in the Ender's Game series, it was split into a separate novel.


Jane, the evolved computer artificial intelligence living the computer networks of the Hundred Worlds of the Starway Congress, is racing to find a way to transfer her aiua or soul into another body, human, pequenino, or bugger before the ansible is shut down.


Peter Wiggin, a creation of sorts by Ender, along with Wang-Mu of the planet Path, travel from world to world instantaneously through Jane's newly developed ability of transporting people and ships faster than light. Peter and Wang-Mu hope to convince highly regarded philosophers to sway the Starways Congress to call off the fleet ordered to destroy the planet Lusitania.


Meanwhile, Miro and Val-Jane travel the stars through Jane's new faster-than-light ability to search for colonizable planets for pequeninos, buggers, and Lusitanian humans to escape to in preparation of the impending destruction of the planet Lusitania.


Ela and Quara, two of Ender's adopted children who are brilliant Xenobioligists from Lusitania, travel to a planet where the "descolada" virus may have originated from to try to communicate with the Descoladores, a new and possibly sentient species introduced in this novel, to stop attacking other inhabited worlds.


The blend of science fiction with philosophy was slightly heavy and somewhat detracted from my full enjoyment of the story. The preachiness peppered throughout the book was less of a religious nature, which was predominant in Xenocide, but rather more of mind, body and soul.


Ideas and questions like "what makes a person a person?", and "are you a part of your soul who lives in you and makes you moral being?", or "are you merely a collection of memories?" are presented head on in this book and quite uniquely.


There is a bittersweet feeling that lingers with me after reading the end of the novel. All the outstanding questions, along with minutiae, stemming from the previous three books are resolved with a sense of peace that follows a life of imbroglio. As the saying goes, a good life is a messy life, so goes this novel.


My rating: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5 stars)

“Xenocide (Ender’s Saga #3) ” by Orson Scott Card, 1991

“Xenocide (Ender’s Saga #3) ” by Orson Scott Card, 1991

The story takes place on two planets; the Catholic colony world of Lusitania, home of the porcine indigenes known as the pequeninos and the Chinese Taoist colony world of Path, home of genetically modified humans. The human colonists on Lusitania are racing to find a solution to the “descolada”, a virus necessary to the three-stage life cycle of the pequeninos but fatal to human beings, before the Starways Congress fleet to destroy Lusitania arrives.

The introduction of subatomic particles the author has invented called “philotes” links everything together and is utilized by the “ansibles” for faster than light communications in the Ender universe, gives rise to the question of faster than light travel. Within the “ansibles”, “philotes”, and computers of the “hundred worlds”, Jane an evolved artificial intelligence with whom Ender and the other aliens are in communication, comes to question her sentience and attempts to develop faster-than-light travel.

With help from the world of Path, the xenobiologists on Lusitania find the solution to the “descolada” and in part also discovering the solution to the “super obsessive-compulsive disorder gene” problem suffered on Path. And with the help of the other aliens, the buggers and the pequeninos, Jane develops faster than light travel; enabling the physical transport and exchange of the “solutions” between the worlds of Path and Lusitania before the arrival of the Starways Congress fleet.

While themes of duty and absolution pervade the novel, the question of the very nature of life itself is at the heart of the novel. Although Xenocide is long with frequent, irksome, and interminable theological/philosophical interludes and wrestles with fundamental questions of faith and free will, it was quite an enjoyable read.

My rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars)




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