even knowing he's a nut, i still feel like he mostly contained the cultism in writing Ender's Game, which just a fantastic book.
Speaker is pretty good, the others ehhhh...
and the Shadow series, on the one hand, i do enjoy as a near-future sci fi political thriller... but his views start to show through on various national characterizations after a bit,
I remember skimming most of it the first time I read it, as a kid, because it had almost no tonal or pacing or stylistic similarity with the 1st book, and was set so far in the future the plot was entirely disconnected, and it felt like the characters were entirely different people too.
In my copy, there was a forward (or maybe afterward) by Card, wherein he was mystified as to why the sequels weren't anywhere near as popular as the first book, and he concluded it was just because the first book was 1) about kids and 2) about kids who he portrayed as basically tiny adults, which appealed to kids who read it. Basically he just blamed it on the characters being older.
But to me, back then, it felt like reading an entirely unrelated book, and Ender didn't feel like the same character at all.
I guess, in the first book, Ender is so excluaively defined by his circumstances that he doesn't actually have a personality otherwise, so in the sequel, where all his circumstances have changed, there's nothing left to signal that it's still the same person and not some random messiah character.
Ditto for his sister, who in book 1 was always just playing 2nd fiddle for the evil brother taking over the world with the power of internet forums, and angsting about him and Ender. Her whole character revolved around her brothers.
Come to think of it, the whole thing about having some random priest-ish type come through and "speak for the dead" always felt really off to me. Like, it wasn't ever believable that he could actually know what they'd have wanted to say and speak for them.
Especially since, what, this hurt, angry child with no trustworthy adults in his life is tricked into committing genocide (after also killing two other children with his bare hands), discovers the aliens were misunderstood, and regrets his actions, and this just somehow makes him calm and super wise on all subjects automatically? Because if not that, where did the wisdom come from? How did he actually learn temperance? There could have been an actual character arc there, but instead that's all just skipped over to the point it feels like he's just swapped for a different character with the same name, to me.
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u/cantadmittoposting Dec 17 '24
even knowing he's a nut, i still feel like he mostly contained the cultism in writing Ender's Game, which just a fantastic book.
Speaker is pretty good, the others ehhhh...
and the Shadow series, on the one hand, i do enjoy as a near-future sci fi political thriller... but his views start to show through on various national characterizations after a bit,