Rating: 
Summary: Excellent read from a master writer.
Review: I have read every book Orson Scott Card has written, even his non-fiction works. Ender's Game will always rank as a top Science Fiction work. My wife and I are writers who admire his work. I just reread Songmaster, one of my favorite Card novels and choked up in places. Card can summon emotions from the written page as well as any writer alive. After reading Card's 'How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, I was inspired to start writing. I wrote Alien Rapture with Brad Steiger and have completed two other fiction works soon to be on amazon.com. I recommend this book to everyone and if you love science fiction enough you might want to read about how to write it. Card is a superb professional writer, teacher, and dreamer who all should admire.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a book for the uncreative.
Review: I have read almost ever single review that is listed on Amazon's site and must say that I am greatly disapointed with what people thought of Card's finish to the Ender's Game Series.... Personally I found Card's forth book to be inspiring and a much needed addition to the Science Fiction genre. People have complained about his technique and about certain aspects of his book. But, I think they all miss the point. Card has created a type of science fiction that hasn't been done before, the people that hate this book were shocked and because of the were disapointed, when the reality of this book is that it is superb. It is amazing, and I think it is Card's best Ender's Game book. Because it DOESN'T focus on the Science, that Card has already established, but focuses on the PEOPLE, which is what his reader's loved.
Rating:
Summary: Appropriate end to the Ender Series
Review: Ender, hurt in his childhood by the lack of it, guiltridden because of his harsh decisions during his stay at the battle and command schools, even though not knowing better what else to do at that time, gets a second chance.
Humanity proves again to be most alien of all.
Rating: 
Summary: Do not waste your time on this one.
Review: As often found with writers of a highly succesful book: the subject is streched beont it's limits. The story drags on for pages without anything happening and wasting paper on surrogate deep thoughts. To quote Salerie from the movie "Mozart" this book just has "to many notes", being to many words. It could have been a short story for a magazine, not a full volume in what could better have been a trilogy or a single book for that matter.
Rating:
Summary: blah!
Review: I loved book one. I loved book 2 even more. Book 3 was once again -- great. What happened? This one started out slow and just got worse. I kept reading, expecting an improvement that just did not come. If you loved the first 3, do yourself a favor and stop there. Try Pastwatch!
Rating: 
Summary: Epitomizes the law of diminishing returns.
Review: Talk about pretentious -- in the afterword to Children of the Mind, Orson Scott Card compares himself to Nobel Prize winning author Kenzaburo Oe. And that really illustrates the problems not only with this latest novel, but the problem of the Ender series, in general.Card is so taken with moral and character dilemmas that he gives short shrift to the actual plot of the story. It might be acceptable if Card had the craft and skill of good "mainstream" author, but he is so heavy-handed that his attempts at literary depth are embarassing. Ender's Game was a great novel because Card did a magnificent job of compression; the result was a taut, gripping and moving story. Speaker For The Dead was a very good novel because the main plot involving the mystery of piggy culture and biology was strong enough to carry the reader past the bland soap opera of the Portugese biologist's family. But the third novel, Xenocide, completely collapsed under its weight, and C! hildren of the Mind -- after starting with what is admittedly a touching scene with Ender and his wife in the monastery -- dissolves into a mess. Any interesting plot flow that might have moved the book forward stops dead every time -- and there are many of them -- Mr. Card yields to his didactic side and inserts a boring, almost expository, conversation about the meaning of reality. Mr. Card also continues another unfortunate trend that began in Speaker For the Dead, as he again speculates on how different ethnic cultures might handle space colonization. No doubt the author is exploring his own well-intentioned curiosity about other people, but his literary clumsiness again betrays him and the results are parodies, such as Japanese wisemen spouting Lotus wisdom and Pacific Islanders who have the wherewithal for space travel but still row on bamboo craft to speak to primitive prophets. It's as annoying as the Catholic Portugese stereotypes that populated Speaker and as insul! ting as Xenocide's Chinese Geniuses-Who-Speak-Like-Confuciu! s. Children of the Mind tries to give us a cliffhanger ending with an interesting mystery to be explored, but although the sci-fi concept itself does have its intrigue, I just can't take any more of these characters.
Rating: 
Summary: The series was brilliant but sagged by the end.
Review: I greatly enjoyed Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. The writing was wonderful, the characterization was excellent, and the plot was interesting and detailed. The first half or so of Xenocide was also wonderful, and the Godspoken of Path were intriguing characters. But by the end of Xenocide, I became disappointed, and Children of the Mind did little to change that. The philotes plot seemed silly (was he just trying to rescue himself after writing himself into a corner with the Lusitania Fleet?) The characters sagged. The new characters were two dimensional in their basic definition, and the book seemed just a forum to air his strange science twists. Even science fiction should still be based on characters and plot, not science or philosophy.
Rating:
Summary: A good conclusion to the Ender Quartet
Review: Children of the Mind is an excellent read. The plotline is intense, the interpersonal-relationships are complex, and the characters are realistic. Card answers all the questions he brought up in the first three books (which, in my opinion, were better). My only complaint is that some of Card's spiritualism can get pretty bizarre at times. The bit about auia's struck me as unrealistic. But as a whole, Children of the Mind is definately a worthy choice.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely disappointing
Review: I bought this book thinking that there would be a wonderfully insightful, charming story filled with 3Dimensional characters, and Card's intriguing blend of science and fantasy. But no. (HEAVY SIGH) I loved Ender's Game, Speaker and Xenocide but this book . . . I don't know where to start. The pseudo philosophy which was so long and drawn out did not consist of philopsphy per se, but a never ending string of whys and wherefores put forth in whiny voices. YUCKY. The characters were so incredibly white and flatbread - no shades of grey - they just tumbled out of the book and landed SPLAT in my mind. Children of the Mind was more of a bunch of half formed ramblings that came to a quick, insignificant, and ludicrous ending (re: Peter, Wang-Mu and the Little Doctor). What was most disappointing was the Afterword and it's disturbing glimpse into Card's reasonings behind certain aspects of the story. I am sorry to say it has made me reluctant to buy any more of his novels. The disappointment of CotM after the brilliance of Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead is very disheartening.
Rating:
Summary: Let's go back to battle school
Review: Ender's Game: 10, Speaker For the Dead: 9, Zenocide: 7, Children of The Mind: 5 A lot of useless self-absorbed inner turmoil and ridiculous pseudo-science in this one. Doesn't have the hard, bitter edge that made Ender's Game so great. These characters bask annoyingly in repentance and unconscionably benevolent gestures toward humanity. And they preach too much--to each other, to themselves, and therefore to me. It seems as though Card went a little overboard with his latest attempt to teach us to be decent to one another, and in the process forgot to entertain us with plausible scenarios. The parallel to modern-day earth he attempts to portray through absurdly homogeneous ethnic worlds is simplistic, hardly a subtle or elegant allegory. But man, was Ender's Game good. Take us back to battle school. Please.
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