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Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Unknown Target on April 03, 2002, 06:11:09 pm

Title: OT-The Ender series.......
Post by: Unknown Target on April 03, 2002, 06:11:09 pm
I HAVE to say it! These books are THE GREATEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The series inlcudes Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead (those are the first two) and about 3 others.
They are superbly written, I love them! If you're ever at a bookstore, pick these up!:D:D:D
Title: OT-The Ender series.......
Post by: Thorn on April 03, 2002, 06:15:06 pm
Read the first one, got it from my Bio teacher of all places...
It was good, havent been able to find the others...
Title: OT-The Ender series.......
Post by: Kamikaze on April 03, 2002, 06:15:35 pm
Heh, those were a good read indeed. Which books have you read?

(Enders Shadow was cool - made me nostalgic and read the original Enders)
Title: OT-The Ender series.......
Post by: Corsair on April 03, 2002, 06:30:29 pm
Eh. :D
Ender's Game and the parallels (Ender's Shadow & Shadow of the Hegemon) were good. I found Speaker for the Dead slightly strange and so didn't read the other sequels. Should I?

Ender r00lz all!
I liked Crazy Tom the best out of the toon leaders though. ;)
Title: OT-The Ender series.......
Post by: Kamikaze on April 03, 2002, 06:41:46 pm
You should read them - just for the heck of it. Seriously though the books lost some quality as they went along - it's still a good read.
Title: OT-The Ender series.......
Post by: mikhael on April 03, 2002, 07:46:55 pm
OSC is good for starting a series with a punch in the jaw and then letting it trail off. The Andrew Wiggin stories are NOT an example of this, however. If you want to see more of that, look at the Homecoming series, or the Tales of Alvin Maker as prime, painful examples.

Bear in mind that I have only read the direct sequels, not any of the parallels.

Ender's Game was the punch in the jaw. It was ugly, brutal, inhuman, dark and painful. It was about the deliberate deconstruction and reconstruction of a person, destroying his childhood and replacing it with a cold, calculating killer. It succeeded in absolutely every respect and the fans, as always, wanted more. Card decided to oblige. Luckily, Card is a smart man. He knew that there was absolutely no way to follow up Ender's Game. Its a complete-in-itself masterwork. Trying to create more of the same would have resulted in a poor imitation that only served to tarnish the first story.

He instead chose to shift the focus, make the story more thoughtful and more moral and ended up with Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind. Card decided to follow the rest of the life of Andrew and his sibs. The summation at the beginning of Speaker for the Dead, to catch us up to the far end of Andrew's life was wonderful and served to distance us from that brutal story, while setting the stage for an examination and partial resolution of his guilt for the terrible thing he was created to do.
Title: OT-The Ender series.......
Post by: Darkage on April 04, 2002, 05:17:19 am
Never heard of it.... but it sounds interesting reading stuff.
Title: OT-The Ender series.......
Post by: Setekh on April 04, 2002, 05:55:28 am
Sounds nice. My reading has just been perked up by reading various bits of Look to Windward again... I gotta find some more Culture books.
Title: Re: OT-The Ender series.......
Post by: Styxx on April 04, 2002, 06:39:46 am
Quote
Originally posted by Unkown Target
If you're ever at a bookstore, pick these up!:D:D:D


Bah, they don't have those books around here. In fact, they don't have practically anything sci-fi. I live in sci-fi hell.