Xenocide

Title: Xenocide [amazon]
Author: Orson Scott Card
Publisher: Tor Books; Reprint edition (August 15, 1992)
Pages: 608
Book Number: 17

After having to let it sit on the back burner for a short while due to final exams, I was happy to be able to finish this book up last night.

When I wrote about Speaker for the Dead, I said that I enjoyed it even more than I had enjoyed Ender’s Game. I can say the same about Xenocide and Speaker for the Dead: I thought Xenocide was even better than Speaker for the Dead. This series just keeps getting better and better. I’m a bit bummed that I’m down to having only one book left to read, Children of the Mind.

I really like how Card tries to thoroughly examine morality and ethics through the lens of science fiction. The tensions between the humans on Lusitania, pequininos, and the buggers was fascinating, and it really made me think about the issues that were at hand. Card also tackles other themes in Xenocide, such as familial issues, religion (I loved the progressions of Han Fei-tzu and his daughter, Qing-jao), and the strange (to us) customs of alien races, such as the slaughtering of pequininos to take them into the “third life.”

There was really only one section of the book that I didn’t care (isn’t there always something?), and that was near the end of it. The Inside, Outside space stuff, and “wishing” themselves to a distant planet, etc. just seemed dumb to me. The springing of the young Peter and Valentine out of essentially Ender’s mind was even sillier than the ship being “wished” back and forth through space. I suppose he gave a decent explanation of what was going on, but it still just came across as goofy.

For those interested (yep, all three of you), I’m now reading The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. This book belongs to the group of books that I’ve owned for years, but haven’t gotten around to actually reading. It’s supposed to be a real gem, and thus far (I’m about 100 pages in), I’m inclined to agree with reviews I’ve read: it’s a great book.