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Xenocide

Xenocide

List Price: $53.00
Your Price: $21.20
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good book, gimp ending.
Review: This book was really good until about three quarters of the way through. Believable, interesting, thought provoking, suspenseful, etc., right up until it got toward the end. The end was absolutely gimp. Just plain gimp. He works the characters into a situation that seems hopeless. You're on the edge of your seat to find out how they manage to get out of it. Suspense factor of 10. Then he takes the readers suspension of disbelief far over the edge and sprinkles the characters with varitable pixie dust and calls it a happy ending. Gimp gimp gimp. I give it a five because it was so good for a while and I really liked the other two books

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best of science fiction is this series.
Review: This book is a great sequel. I reccomend it. It is about 600 pages long, but its worth the reading time. It took me 2 months to read it, but thats because I am only ten years old. Read this

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: How is this book's superiority overlooked?
Review: "Ender's Game" was very good, entertaining, and thought-provoking. "Speaker for the Dead" had some interesting ethical problems among its characters. But Xenocide is in a class by itself! It makes exploring a handful of ethical questions incredibly, incredibly interesting (which I wouldn't have thought possible before reading it--I normally like books with big explosions and bug-eyed aliens). This is a novel that shocked me by breaking (far) out of the mold of what I thought I could expect from a novel (as did Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series). If my estranged son was a writer, and as my only gift I could leave him 10 books, this would be one, because I think that it tremendously expands the envelope of how fascinating a book can be when it questions foundations of human interaction that are normally overlooked. As I was reading it I became filled with a growing excitement at the possibilities that the novel had opened; where in most novels, after reading a certain amount, you can provide a fairly rigid structure for the rest of the novel, and know that the reasonable possiblities are limited, this is a novel that allows so many meaningful possibilities (to occur in a manner that would be consistent with the rest of the novel) that it is extraordinarily exciting to read

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The third Ender book meets Card's usual excellence.
Review: Xenocide is more on Card's philosophical side, but nonetheless is a highly entertaining and powerful addition to the Ender Saga. Learn what happens to the three senitent species of Lusitania, and the ongoing attempts to neutralize the descolada virus. Find out how Miro deals with his devastating handicap. For a third time, Orson Scott Card has managed to capture the feelings and emotions of his charecters in such a way that the reader can hardly put the book down

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not as exiting as ENDER'S GAME, decent though.
Review: An adequate apology for SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD. Definitly a good book, but not near as good as ENDER'S GAME.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not too bad
Review: Xenocide is not quite up to par with the previous books in the Ender Series. It starts off slowly, with Jane cutting off ansible communications with the fleet that has been sent to attack the colony on Luisitania, and doesn't really start to get interesting until over 100 pages into the book. From the 100 page mark it does become an enjoyable read.

A God-spoken girl on the world of Path is set the task of finding out why they lost contact with the fleet, while the people of Luisitania search for a way to stop the Descolata from killing them and all of humanity by keeping the Pequinoes confined to just one planet. Through their separate searches, many amazing and terrifying things are discovered. The frightening purpose of the Descolata is discovered, as is the reason behind the God-spoken of Path. All of these discoveries help to add tension and excitement to an otherwise pretentious book.

The story leaves many questions unanswered, and the survival of the human colony is in doubt, as the whole universe seems to be pushing for its destruction. With the first books in this series, all this seemed fresh and new, if not a little overbearing, but now it's just getting old. The story seems a little forced in places, and it's not as fun as its predecessors.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Philosophical and ethical issues---I loved it!
Review: It seems the reviewers of this book are divided into two camps. Some hated the book because it doesn't live up to Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, because the "plot" is boring and minimal, because it's too long and drags, etc. Others rate Xenocide highly because of its well developed characters and its treatment of ethical issues. Both views are valid to some extent, but if you're able to accept this book for what it is, then you'll find it's a superb book, well worth the time to read it.

Ender's Game is all about Ender's childhood development, as he trains to become the savior of humanity. Speaker for The Dead explores some larger issues as it tracks Ender's healing of Novinha's dysfunction family, and the plot is kept going partially through the mysteries concerning the pequininos. Xenocide is different from both of these in that there's no real main character, and very little plot; instead, the focus of the story is the dillema faced by the three sentient species of Lusitania. Within this framework, Card explores a number of unusual ethical questions, such as whether human survival justifies the extermination of another species, and whether fear of the unknown will always be a barrier when interacting with those unlike ourselves. He also develops the complex web of love and hatred within Novinha's family, and the nature of the relationships within it. At times it was almost painful to read about the emotional states of the characters, so well did Card depict it. Yet I was completely hooked from the start, and I marvel at his ability to write about some very abstract issues within a science fiction setting.

If anything, the situation Card created was too hopeless, and once things started resolving the plot became a bit incredulous. One reviewer suggested that Card wrote himself into a corner and had to resort to cheap plot devices to save himself, and that's certainly how it looks to me. Happily, this occurs so near the end it doesn't detract much from the overall value of the book. (However, the consequences are compounded in the final book, Children of the Mind, which is the only one of the four I do not recommend reading.)

I enjoyed Xenocide as much as, if not more than Ender's Game and SftD. (One has to admit that Ender's Game, fantastic as it is, is much more simplistic and lightweight than Xenocide.) As long as you don't enter with undue expectations and you are willing to explore some tough ethical issues, then you'll see the merits of this book, perhaps the most human novel Card has written.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: third...a charm!
Review: Xenocide is a brilliant piece of work. After "Ender's Game" and "Speaker For The Dead", Mr. Card shows us that he is still able to take the plot and thicken it. After all, it's hard to take Sci-Fi story, and cover it with philosophic dilemas and moral cross roads. Mr. Card takes us again thru the path of Ender Wiggin while throwing more charcters and more information and enables us to imagine a world on all it's aspects. The decription's are so full and rich in details, and the charcters seems so alive that by the end of he book you feel as if you had known them. It is recommended to read the previos books before reading Xenocide in order to get familiar with the charcters. There is one thing that disturbs the full enjoyment of the book: the fact that the characters haven't grown up! even though it's been 30 years since the last book, they behaviour remained as if they are still little kids. But besides this little thing, Xenocide brings the serious to new hights. Well Done again, Mr. Card!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Part 2 of a trilogy
Review: Most people who have read "Ender's Game" and "Speaker for the Dead" will like this novel, not for its content but because they love Ender. Card wrote Game as a stand alone novel and Speaker as the first of a trilogy, (he may not have meant to from the beginning, but that's how these books play out). Readers familiar to trilogies know that in most cases they follow a rigid pattern, 1) Setup, 2) bridge, 3) conflict and conclussion. Speaker set up the saga with more style than most trilogies, and is a great novel on its own. Xenocide is just a bridge which disappointed me, and from what I've seen from other reviews, quite a lot of people as well. I was expecting another great novel, but what I read had a "to be continued" feel.

The book is above average for a bridge or arc, which is usually a good thing. However, with our expectations so high from the first two books, this novel falls short of absolute brilliance, and is instead just a good read. We meet a supporting cast of new characters, some hateful and seemingly villianous, which is something new to the series. We are introduced to the dark side of Starways Congress who seem to act out of spite and anger for no real reason. This was the most troubling aspect of the book for me. The first books of the series gave us moral ambiguity and actions bourne of neccesity rather than evil. The story always gave us hope for the future, but the darkness introduced here dims that a bit.

The story still takes place on Ender's "home" world of Lusitania, where the three species are gearing up for the threat of destruction by Starways Congress. We still get the moral dillemas typical of the series, but they feel just a bit contrived at times. Ender's wife acts too standoffish to be true to life. One wonders how Ender ever fell in love with her, and stayed with her for so long. The Sci-fi/fantasy aspect of the book overtakes the human drama which made the series so great and feel so real to the readers. If you get through this book, the conclussion of the series waits on the other side in the novel "Children of the Mind", which gets a lot of the greatness back. If you've read the first two, stick with it. If you haven't read Ender before, please don't start here. If you start here, don't give up on it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Superb, Dont listen to these other dolts
Review: This book is amazing, as is all the ender books. People who have read this are too stuck on Ender's game. They want action, but its called creating a story people. You can't have action action everywhere....if you really are a vivid reader and can grasp storylines, then the storytelling is action on itself. This book leaves off after Speaker for the Dead. I was dreading reading this book because people were bashing it so hard. But im glad i took my own advice. This book is amazing. If you read Ender's Game and Speaker...read this you WILL NOT be dissapointed. Thank u


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