by Orson Scott Card
My attempts at reading this book have been on hold because A. has been carrying it with him to read during his commute to work. This weekend when it was in the house I tried again. And felt frustrated because I just could not get back into it. It\’s almost pathetic that I was even trying, because there was only one part of the story that still interested me, and it just wasn\’t enough to carry me through the whole book. If you\’re planning to read the entire series, skip the following spoiler.
— SPOILER — Near the end of the previous book Xenocide, there was a fascinating scene where Ender unintentionally brought to life two new people who embodied his strongest, subconscious emotions. They were his greatest love and his worst nemesis: a younger memory of his sister Valentine, and Peter in his prime. So suddenly a duplicate copy of his sister and his brother come back to life were wandering around. The curious dynamics this created interested me more than any other part of the story. Especially the premise that the resurrected Peter and young Valentine weren\’t true individuals, but fed off of Ender\’s energy; reflecting his current desires and interests even as they went about their own activities. I was really curious to see how their presence in the story was resolved. — — END SPOILER — —
But I just couldn\’t slog my way through the invented politics and history. I had just said to myself: I think I\’m going to like this book, it feels more personal like Ender\’s Game, when I ran into the first explanation of a complex political situation steeped in asian cultures and futuristic history. It was so boring I skipped ten pages. I tried a bit more but finally gave up on page 132. It just got too tedious. I\’m almost ashamed to say this, but I\’m going to go read a full-length summary to find out what happened to those two characters mentioned above, satisfy my curiosity about that one thread of the story, and call it quits.
Abandoned 370 pages, 1996