Three months ago I was introduced to Orson Scott Card through his book “Ender’s Game.” Seeing how awesome his envisioning of modern technology (a lot of which have come true since the book was published) and study of human nature was, I eagerly jumped into the second book of the series, “Speaker for the Dead.”
This book was even better!!
True, it was not as action backed as “Ender’s Game” but nonetheless it was an amazing book that dove deep into the human behavior. How does one treat an alien race that is different than one’s own? How about a human who is reacting out of guilt and secrecy? Can you learn to understand someone, even when they are ‘evil’ and do bad things?
It was with great joy that I picked up the third book in the series, “Xenocide” (especially since book two ended before everything was resolved).
Sadly enough, I have to report that “Xenocide” failed to uphold the same standard as the first two… 🙁
Well, kind of… the first three-fourth of the book was fairly good as Card tried hard to explore how one could live side-by-side with aliens, who by their very existence, places your life in danger. He also explores the nature of life and what it means to be alive.
I grant you that these are not easy questions/topics to explore…so some grace must be given to Card for tackling such concepts. However I must say that Card ended up backing himself into a corner with tons of major problems for his characters that could not be solved easily…
So instead of letting them die or having them fail, he jumps the shark and solves 95% of the problems with one action.
[Spoiler Alert!]
Normally I let an author get away with as there are times when something has to give…yet… when Card has his characters recreating their bodies, figuring out faster-than-light travel, bring 3,000 year old dead people to life, and developing new forms of a virus by simply wishing for it… sorry, I can’t go there… that is a tad much for me.
True, he develops a huge ‘scientific’ theory/argument for such wishing…but no…can’t buy it. 😕
Sorry, Mr. Card, but you lost me.
OK…
I really enjoyed the ender series (including the parallel series that follows Bean), but I shared your opinion of Xenocide. He definitely solves too many plot difficulties in too simple a way. However, I felt the book brilliantly dealt with a) cross cultural relationships and b) alien biology, in a very realistic and creative way.
The ‘murder’ of the humans by the piggies was a phenomenal study in cross cultural (mis)communication…
Agreed – Card did a great job looking at the cross cultural relationships of the different aliens/humans. I also really, really enjoyed his portrayal of Father Estevão. Awesome stuff! 🙂
Now if only he could have changed that one part…. 🙁