Rating: 
Summary: Children of the Mind a Poor Closeout to a terrific Saga
Review: In classic Card style, Card breaks off completely from the story that he has been telling for the past 3 books to unburden his soul and really spell out in blatant terms his opinions on life, the universe, and everything else. This book completes the Ender Saga in a rather roundabout way, really not dealing with Ender in any way/shape/form. Instead it goes on to tell the story of Ender's evil brother Peter who was born out of Ender's fear and his pairing with a servant girl who beleives in serving her god. This book is so philisophical I think Card is overshooting his audience a bit. For those who enjoyed the series as a story, they will not find any joy in this book at all, as it really is a weak storyline. For those that were taking the depper route they too will feel cheated as Card underestimates their intelligence and blatantly explains the story he is trying to share with everyone in a rather direct manner.If you have read the first 3 books then you will want to read this one to enjoy the end of the story, but if you have not read an Ender's book before, this is not the place to start.
Rating:
Summary: A good ending...not great, but good
Review: Card is one of my favorite authors. The only reason he's not my declared favorite is just because I haven't read everything by him yet. The Ender series stands as my favorite serious sci-fi series; I hold that Card serves up the perfect formula of adventure, levity, technical science, technically skilled writing, and just plain fun. The second half of the Ender series is noticeably more self-indulgent than the first. It seems stuck in that twilight zone where it might have been better if it were shorter, but everything seems to be vital to the storyline! While not as gripping as the previous installments, I found the continued development of Ender and his doppelgangers satisfying, but I would have liked more about Novinha (though I can always refer back to Speaker) and some of the others. Card's ideas are still fresh and engaging; I thought the ending was well-done (after all, how DO you end such a stellar series? The pressure was immense and he came through), and furthermore, Card had the intelligence to know when to quit - to know when the story is over and not try to drag it out forever just to make more money. My hat's off to him - this was a great series, the ending is exemplary; not too long, not too short. And now it's on to Ender's Shadow.
Rating: 
Summary: Great conclusion to Ender's tale!
Review: First there was "Ender's Game", then "Speaker of the Dead", both Hugo winners, and now this great book that unravels and reweaves Ender's life and surrounding events and situations. This book is fantastic and I eagerly added it to other great books ranging from the Old School of science-fiction like "Foundation trilogy", "Childhood's End", "Stranger in a Strange Land" to cyberpunk like "Neuromancer", "Cryptonomicon", and "Darkeye: Cyber Hunter". Get it!
Rating: 
Summary: People Just Don't Understand this book.....
Review: I think, personally, people are being a little biased against this book.
The books Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind are basically seperate from Ender's Game. It's a different story, more or less, with Ender as the main character. The major difference between these two "series" is that Ender's game is more brash and fast paced. The next three are more scientific, moral, and focus more on what the right thing is to do. But more about this specific book: While many readers are mad that Ender does die a while before the book ends, the title, "Children of the Mind" implies his "children" will fufill his quest; also , read the back of the book; he is not meant to be the main focus in this book. The reason I don't think people really understand this book (Although they are entitled to their own opinions) is that you have to be really paying attention to it to understand it. At the beginning of Xenocide, they started talking about "philoites" and souls, and what keeps bodies and people who know eachother "twined together" so to speak. It may seem weird at first, but once you read through the series, this book works. Just to be clear, the book is NOT as straightforward as Ender's Game or Speaker for the Dead, but if you are willing to devote your undivided attention to Xenocide and Speaker for the Dead they are great reads. Quite frankly, I don't think some people are smart enoguh to really understand Xenocide and Children of the Mind, but I can see how some people don't like the book. I respect their opinions. Although I hope you read this book regardless of whether you heard good reviews or bad reviews, because it is the conclusion to the series. All in all, the book finished all the questions we had from the previous books and made some new ones come up that do not tie in to the story directly. Is another book coming? I hope so. If you read the series up to Children of the Mind, don't stop there. It is a great read and a good conclusion. You'd be missing out if you didn't. It might turn out that you will hate it. But it's not a extremely long book anyway. I would dive right in.
Rating:
Summary: CLEVER LINE GOES HERE: The Story of Ender's End.
Review: Let's be frank - if you're still reading all these reviews by now, you're a hardcore Ender Wiggin fan. Which means that you've already read the book, which means you don't need me to summarize any further. I would like to tell you my experience with the Ender Saga - I started in my early pre-pubescence and ended Children of the Mind in the last year of high school. It has paralleled my development most interestingly - starting out with incredible surety and pride and ending in self-conscious philosophy. Be honest - no real reader would tolerate Children of the Mind if he (or she, but most likely he) was not tied up in the series. The writing sags alarmingly, the plot frays like old rope and the characters' emotions are stamped directly onto their cardboard surfaces. I think part of the intense appeal of the Ender saga is that most of us read it in our youth. We all love the story of the boy genius - we all dare to draw the parallels between his life and our own. By reaching such an uppity segment of the reading populace, intentionally or not, Card has unmasked one doozy of a love/hate relationship. So feel free to read Ender from his first moments of brillance to his tragicomic death. But if you compare yourself to him, even if only in your head, remember that his life has turned out just as absurdly as anyone else's.
Rating:
Summary: The best "Ender" volume yet!
Review: This series has "grown up" as I have. I read Ender's Game for its space opera value, and enjoyed Speaker for the Dead for its dialogic nature (religion, science, and reality). Xenocide left me hanging, but I had grown into its "philosophical" nature, and Children of the Mind was just the ending this series needed. It brings the Ender saga to its perfect resolution, offering some of everything we have come to expect from Ender, yet a thoroughly unexpected ending. This book was a wonderful read, and I recommend it to anyone who loved Ender the Warrior (Ender's Game), Ender the Speaker (Speaker for the Dead), or Ender the Philosopher (Xenocide), Card brings all of that together in this climactic volume.
Rating: 
Summary: Card Needs to Learn How to Write
Review: I was extremely disappointed with this book. Ender's Game was fascinating but Speaker for the Dead had very little action and this book just was the absolute pit. Card sets up situations and then never uses them, the actions of his characters are all futile and every character is just a repeat of one created in a previous novel with a personality quirk. More importantly, we never discover who the people really are; we only learn their basic epithet, the blind one, the religious one, the silly one. The entire "Descoloda is sentient" argument gets tedious, the same conversations are repeated multiple times and nothing really happens for a really long time as if Card suddenly remembered that something actually has to HAPPEN in a book. The OCD people are just irritating. Card also creates charactes with potential (like Plikt) then discards them and they aren't spoken of again. Also he seems to write himself into holes and then have to write himself out again with this "Well what we spent the last 400 pages saying wasn't true suddenly is." The "think-travel" is just ridiculous. Card needs to learn to be less random in his writing for sure. This book leaves off exactly where it started and nothing really gets acc
Rating:
Summary: much different than the previous 3 in the series
Review: This book is necessary because it gives you the conclusion to Ender's life, you definitely want to know what happens in his last days. But don't expect the read to be very similar to the other 3 books in the series. There's more inactivity. There's some asian history and philosophy. Being a student of science and never having had a deep interest in the liberal arts, I was only kept attentive to those philosophical discussions because I'm asian; others might find those parts boring.
Overall it's still a great book, like all others in the Ender's Game series. You're left feeling disappointed that it's the end and there is no more to read about Ender, because reading the series was an experience.
Rating:
Summary: Should never have been written
Review: I highly recommend NOT reading this book, which managed to diminish the magic of Ender's Game for me. Stop at Xenocide, which was pretty good, and skip straight to Ender's Shadow, which is VERY good. This book is exceedingly disjointed, makes way too much of the Valentine/Peter dichotomy, and is boring, boring, boring. Where I couldn't put the other Ender books down, I had to really struggle to finish this one. And then wished I hadn't.
Rating:
Summary: More an "epilogue" than a fourth book in this classic series
Review: Having read and loved the first three books in the Ender series, there was no way I was going to miss this entry. Like so many others, though, I am of split mind about the finale (and how appropriate, given the schizophrenic existence of its lead characters Ender-Peter and Val-Jane). While "Children of the Mind" does contain Card's trademark wit and while the last 100 pages kick into high gear, the final installment, on its own, is as unsatisfying as it is pleasing. One of the major problems is Card's ill-considered decision to publish "Xenocide" and "Children of the Mind" as two books rather than one cohesive unit; the fourth entry seems more an epilogue to the series--a 350-page denouement--than the climax it should have been. Card admits he originally planned the two books as one work, and this admission resonates like an apology. Well over a third of "Children of the Mind" summarizes what happened in previous volumes, and another third is riddled with endless conversations on political and metaphysical topics, many of which the characters already debated at length in "Xenocide." Only in the last 100 pages does Card finally abandon the themes that were presented more thoroughly (and competently) in the earlier books and turn his attention to resolving the many loose ends. In sum, Card would have been much wiser to have written a unified 600-page book rather than 900 needlessly repetitive pages. The second problem is that Card's philosophical ruminations often steer awfully close to quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo. The entire section set on Pacifica, a planet governed by Samoans, feels particularly incongruous. (Peter and Wang-mu wonder aloud--twice--what they are doing on this particular world, a question that is never really fully addressed.) True--some of the philosophical questions are fascinating, but there's very little that wasn't already said better and more succinctly in "Xenocide," and the dialogue is often excruciatingly shallow. Take this conversation between Valentine and Novinha, which reads in part: "You didn't really need him anymore." "He never needed me." "He needed you desperately," said Valentine. "He needed you so much he gave up Jane for you." "No," said Novinha, "He needed my need for him. He needed to feel like he was providing for me, protecting me." "But you don't need his providence or his protection anymore." I wish I could tell you this bit of dizzying dialogue is an exception, but there are similar angst-ridden conversations between Miro and Val, Peter and Wang-mu--in short, between any two characters who feel the need to explain to each other their raison d'etre. In the earlier books, Card allowed metaphysical questions to arise as much from the actions of the characters and the development of the plot as from the dialogue; in "Children of the Mind," everyone seems to be in post-Freudian interplanetary counseling. Yet the book is not a wholesale disaster; and I particularly enjoyed the page-turning final resolution, even though it relies on a melodramatic sleight of hand. If the last third of "Children of the Mind" were merged with a pared-down version of "Xenocide," the whole would probably have been equal to the excellence of the first two books in the Ender series.
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