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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“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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