Review: "The Last Shadow" by Orson Scott Card, 2021

The Last Shadow by Orson Scott Card
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Orson Scott Card's latest novel, The Last Shadow, brings the Ender series and the Shadow saga back into the same timeline and ultimately brings a conclusion to both series.

It is readable and relatable for anyone who has read Ender's Game. It's pretty interesting how Card writes about hyper-intelligent kids, people, and aliens and the interactions among them. This final installment wraps up – loosely – the lives of the principal characters of the whole series: Ender, Jane, Valentine, Bean's children, the Hive Queen, the pequeninos, the descolada virus, etc. 

A nice touch is how Card answered many questions about what happened between Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. If you are a fan of the Ender Series, I think you will find this book to be an engaging and bittersweet conclusion. Parts meander a bit here and there, but it provides a rewarding ending for the most part.

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Review: Treason

Treason by Orson Scott Card
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An odd and interesting story that delves into gender identity, nature, and superhuman abilities.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Re-release of Orson Scott Card’s 1979 “classic”: a tale of a radical regenerative running amok on an imprisoned planet, collecting super powers along the way and searching for redemption and significance.

Several generations and several hundreds of years ago, a group of the intellectual elite attempted to mutiny and take over the galactic government. Upon the failure of the coup the group were exiled to planet Treason. Now the exiles have grown into cities with with skills refined to the point of superhuman abilities. They trade the refined products of their skills through Ambassadors—teleport machines—for iron (Treason pretty has little to no iron) with which each elite group (now cities) race to build a spaceship to get off-planet.

Lanik Mueller, descendant of the genetic-experts who discovered the secret of regeneration, turns out to be a "rad"—one in whom the regeneration runs wild; thus horribly disfigured, he must seek salvation in the world at large. The tree-dwelling, conquering Nkumai have recently acquired much iron, he learns. How? Well, their ancestor was a physicist, so they've traded the secret of faster-than-light travel. The Schwartzes have learned how to commune with the rocks (geology ancestors) and can perform all kinds of lithopathic miracles. The Ku Kuei (philosophy) have acquired the ability to slow or speed time. But the real enemies of everyone on Treason, Lanik learns after many trials and adventures, are the Andersons (politics), who've perfected a method of projecting illusions so convincing that all are fooled into submission without realizing it. 

The review link below is a good story summary as the book tells it.

https://dreamingaboutotherworlds.blogspot.com/2012/08/review-treason-by-orson-scott-card.html

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Ender's Shadow (Ender's Shadow #1), by Orson Scott Card, 1998

Ender's Shadow (Ender's Shadow #1), by Orson Scott Card, 1998

Interesting, entertaining, and surprisingly enough not Ender's Game.

I've put off reading this book for a couple of years. I felt I had enough OSC (Orson Scott Card) preachiness after reading the Ender's Game series from Ender's Game to Children of the Mind.

I was surprised to find this story goes back to Ender's Game. Not quite a re-telling of the same story, but rather a new perspective on the events and outcome of Ender's Game.

Bean, was a minor character in Ender's Game. However, here, Bean receives full billing. We get to know Bean. How he earned his name. his special talents. How he lands in battle school. And his relationship to Ender Wiggins.

Seeing through Bean's eyes added new depth and understanding to Ender's Game. The cast of characters is more complete with the additional perspective of Bean from Enders'.

On it's own, the story is good, if not fantastic. There is enough original story to be considered separate from Ender's tale. The beauty is in how the author wove it in seamlessly to Ender's Game.

Bean is a homeless child living in hellish conditions in the streets of Rotterdam. He escapes his circumstance by gaining notice from Sister Carlotta. He is tested and discovered to have an incredible mind and super increased intelligence; traits the battle school is looking for in recruits for the impending war against the Buggers (The Formics).

While in battle school Bean meets Ender and eventually develops an uneasy, if not distant relationship. At first, Ender doesn't seem to recognize Bean's abilities, but time shows that Ender was grooming Bean as his tactical support.

The main theme rests on Bean's struggle with the battle school administration; tyring to uderstand the reasoning for their actions, their treatment of Ender, what they may have in store for him. Amongst all of this, Bean has to contend with the reappearance of someone (Achilles) from his time in the streets of Rotterdam.

My rating: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5 stars) - I really liked it.

"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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