Once things get rolling in a more serious way, it gets much worse. While this portion of the book sets up some important foundation for later chapters and has some interesting discussions, I tend to get very tired of the general feeling of despair that permeates each of these characters.

Instead, we read from the viewpoints of a father and daughter dealing with death and psychological issues, as well as a young man whose brain damage from a previous incident has left him incredibly depressed and angry at the world. Part of the problem in this beginning is that the core character of the series, Ender, doesn’t ever show up. I always have great forward momentum in my reading when I get to Xenocide, and these first hundred pages just destroy that momentum. In the end, it takes a hundred pages to get back to the planet Lusitania, where the majority of Speaker for the Dead took place. During that time we are also reintroduced to more familiar characters currently travelling through space. We first meet some new characters who seem completely unrelated to anything that happened in previous books, and their subplot takes about eighty pages to join the rest of the plot. The plot moves forward in fits and starts with things moving very slowly at first. Instead, I always feel frustrated that our superlatively clever and resourceful characters have accomplished practically nothing. Even one or two resolutions would have felt very satisfying. Perhaps some of the underlying interpersonal issues could have resolved themselves. The optimist in me feels like we should have seen more character growth. Unfortunately, these characters and conflicts have progressed surprisingly little during the intervening thirty years. Most of the characters from Speaker for the Dead have returned. Fortunately, this creates a strong sense of continuity. Xenocide picks up thirty years after Speaker for the Dead and continues the major struggles that emerged at the end of that book. Whenever I start reading the Ender’s Game series, I immediately feel a sense of dread because this means I’ve started down a road that eventually leads through the longest book in the series: Xenocide. You can find his other posts on the Ender’s Game series here. Editor’s Note: This is the twelfth in Stephen Olson’s series of posts on Orson Scott Card’s award winning Ender’s Game novels.

Xenocide book