Book Report 8: Xenocide by Orson Scott Card

It took me quite a while to finish this book. It's a fairly long book, but also, it didn't hold my attention as much as I would have hoped. The other books by Card have been much more enjoyable (like Ender's Game).

In Xenocide, it's a continuation of the Enter series after the Speaker book. Xenocide started slow, got a little far fetched and weird, then ended without really finishing the main part of the story (like what is happening to the fleet?) that started in Speaker.

I understand it's to help push you to read the next book, but, the first 2 books were fine to be read on their own, but Xenocide isn't.

Also, the character development in Xenocide wasn't as well written. Some characters didn't have content needed to really develop, and some older characters, their characteristic changed. Ender, for example, began as a genius who could figure out the hardest problems in life. However, in Xenocide, even though he's older and should be more wise, seems like he has become incapable of handling many problems.

I think the book tries to tell us that world wide problems, Ender (and other geniuses like him) may be able to fix, but fixing his own problems in his own life (like with his wife), he's unable to. It's an interesting point because for someone born to be a genius, and trained to be a genius, and for one who saved the world due to his genius... he really doesn't seem to know how to read into what his own wife says and feels, and it causes him drama and problems he could have avoided. Though, I think this is true for many men in the world, as we men are not mind readers. So in a way, it can be good to make Ender a more relatable character.

This book though, i had to put down and come back to a few times. It wasn't something I could read in one go, or had a strong feeling of 'i have to go back to read it! to find out what's next!" it was more of a "i already started it, so I might as well finish it"

the book also touched on religion, and how it can turn some people into fanatics. While I believe Religion is great, and having faith is important, falling blind to the wellbeing of the human race or other matters simply because of a belief is wrong. In the book, the world of Path, there is one character who, even when science proves her wrong, she chooses to believe in a make believe God, and she risks killing many innocent people because of this belief, and ends up ruining her own life. While religion is important to follow, you need to ensure others do not get injured, and you yourself do not ruin your own life. Like all else in life, there has to be a balance.

I plan to read the next book in the Ender series. However, if that book also falls short like this one did... i may stop there and not finish the rest of the series. This book had too many concepts that were a bit too out there, and issues that rose that could have been avoided with simple communication. While that can make the book more relatable, it did at times feel too repetitive and also in a way bothersome. And some of their solutions to the problems (Without ruining the story) really sounded like the author ran out of time or better ideas, and just wrote something crazy down to solve the problem, even though there could have been more logical, scientific, and even believable methods.

I am curious to see how the next book is nonetheless, and I hope it works out well.