About this title: In "Enders Game", the world's most gifted children were taken from their families and sent to an elite training school. At "Battle School", they learned combat, strategy, and secret intelligence to fight a dangerous war on behalf of those left on Earth. But they also learned some important and less definable lessons about life. After the life ...
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Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Tor Books
Date Published: 2008-11-11
ISBN-13:9780765304964ISBN:0765304961
Description: New. Gift condition, Priority Shipping recommended for prompt delivery by USPS when offered, Delivery Confirmation on all domestic items where available. read more
Description: Fine. 0765304961 NEW * FIRST EDITION /FIRST PRINTING * Hardcover w/ beautiful Dust Jacket ~ all books carefully examined & well packaged. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Tor Books
Date Published: 2008-11-11
ISBN-13:9780765304964ISBN:0765304961
Description: NEW. Hardcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780765304964. read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: A Tom Doherty Associates Book, New York
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780765304964ISBN:0765304961
Description: Very Good. No Jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Stated First Edition. The interior is clean, binding is good, there is some wear to the cover. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Tor Books
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780765304964ISBN:0765304961
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Spoken Word Compact Disc
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Date Published: 2008-11-11
ISBN-13:9781427205124ISBN:1427205124
Description: NEW. Spoken Word Compact Disc. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9781427205124. read more
Binding: Audio CD
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9781427205124ISBN:1427205124
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
"I mean, granted, it's been awhile since I read all the way through the Shadow books. But I did think this was better than the majority of those, if nowhere even in the same ballpark as Ender's Shadow. That speaks more to the badness of the Shadow series than to Exile's goodness, though. The character development was shoddy, the pacing bizarre, and the overall "scope" of what happened dull. The only thing of real interest (to me) was the expanded relationship between Ender and the young boy from the end of Ender's Game -- but this was underdeveloped. And the completely weird subplot (if it can be called that, since the characters pop up for a lesson in morals and then disappear never to matter again) with the scientist and his lab assistant was frustrating and blatantly reeking of An Agenda. I don't need to be preached at, I just want to read a story. So just Tell the story. It breaks my heart to know that OSC considers this one of the best of his works."
"I read the kindle version of this book on my iPhone.
This is the latest offering in the "Enderverse" which starts with "Ender's Game," a short story published in the late 1970s that was later converted by the author into a full-length, and very very good, novel. Card writes well, and knows how to tell good stories that touch the heart.
But I do not find Card a trustworthy author - he has written short stories in the horror genre that still give me bad dreams, and he had written other series (Earthborn, Alvin Maker) that I ultimately abandoned and found unreadable for various reasons. On the other hand, some of his novels rank among my all-time favorites, and are books I re-read from time to time.
Alas, he also writes many of his prejudices into his novels, especially in the last decade or so, and I think his novels suffer as a consequence - his earlier works were better. His prejudices force him to do odd things to his characters, not letting them develop as the story demands. At least if he is going to write his prejudices into his stories, he should try to do a better and more convincing job of it! In his case, the fact that he does not do a better and more convincing job of it makes me wonder if his heart is really in it at all - if the reason he is expressing these prejudices so badly is that in his heart of hearts, he doesn't really believe in them but is being pressured externally to write them in anyway. It is well known he is a Morman by faith and has a strong wife - perhaps that's where the external pressure arises. At this remove, it is impossible to know, but whatever the pressure is, it is throwing spanner wrenches into otherwise good writing.
For one example (among many) from this novel, a scientist is living on a planet where women are few and men are plentiful. They are a colony founded by a stranded military space vessel, and for reasons not well supported they make the seemingly illogical decision to pair off, by lottery, in monogamous marriages with the few women leaving most of the men to live celibate lives where they will never have the chance to reproduce. Wouldn't it make more sense, speaking scientifically (and this is science fiction) in such a situation to let the women choose with whom to mate, to encourage the women by first class support from the men to have as many babies as humanly possible, and to encourage the women to mate with multiple fathers to widen the gene pool as much as possible? One of these newly married women expresses a desire to take the scientist who is her boss as her secret lover - she was not allowed to choose her husband for herself (pairings were done by lottery) and wants to have his child rather than her husband's since she believes that his is the finest example of manhood on the planet, and she loves him and wants him. He, poor man, loves and wants her - but he turns her down flat. Why? Because monogamy is, the colony has decided by majority vote, the best way. And he won't violate this convention, even knowing that his own genes won't get passed on and his own natural desires and hers will have to be stifled for their lifetimes. He consoles himself with the thought that, after she's had a few babies by her husband, she won't be so beautiful, she might get fat, and she'll be too involved in child rearing to pay him much attention anyway. I found this story segment not convincing at all for the characters - violating my suspension of disbelief. If Card needed to put this in, he should have worked harder to make it more emotionally convincing!
Full disclosure - I am myself in a monogamous marriage of 30 years, and love being part of this exclusive and very special relationship with my husband. But my own prejudices and lifestyle don't matter to me in judging a story by its internal consistency - or lack thereof. A pity Card can't do the same...for whatever reasons.
Others of Card's recent novels in the Enderverse and outside of it have suffered from similar serious story flaws.
Other than such flaws, which is why this gets four stars and not five, the novel was a satisfying addition to the Enderverse."
"The direct sequel to Ender's Game is not as exciting as some of Card's other books, but most readers of Ender's Game will want to learn what happened next. About a third of the way into the novel, it became very exciting."
"Orson Scott Card keeps revisiting his Ender universe and churning out more stories about the Battle School kids. This novel returns to Ender, catching him just after the extermination of the Buggers. It's told through multiple points of view - Ender Wiggin's, Valentine's, the Wiggin parents, and other characters - and follows Ender's journey to Shakespeare colony and his governorship and subsequent travel to Ganges.
I was really impressed by Ender's Game when I first read it, and subsequent re-readings have held up over time. I also enjoyed Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and even Children of the Mind. Ender's Shadow, the only one of the non-Ender books I read, was ok. Bean's perspective of the Bugger wars and Battle School was at least a little different from Ender's, even though there was some overlap in their stories (as one might expect, given that they covered the same time period/events). While Ender in Exile fills in some holes before we get to the Ender of Speaker for the Dead, I didn't feel like it really enriched my understanding of Ender in any way. And, in fact, it belabored his altruism, made Valentine seem obnoxious, obtuse, and overly mother hen-like, and made a really big deal of a couple characters that aren't going to have any importance later on. Their stories, and relationships with Ender don't have any lasting impression on him, and Orson Scott Card didn't do anything to make me care for them much either. It was very much ado about nothing. There were also a couple of moments where I felt like Card was trying to push a philosophical/religious agenda forward rather than allowing the characters to be who they were, and that made me uncomfortable with the story as well. Overall, I was rather disappointed in this, and I'll have to go back and reread Ender's Game (yet again), to get the bad taste out of my brain (and to reassure myself that it's still good).
In the Afterword, Card mentions that he's eventually re-releasing another edition of Ender's Game - one where he's rewritten chapter 15 to adjust for the timeline of events that he fleshes out in Ender in Exile. I mentioned that to a friend of mine who was shocked and horrified. It doesn't sound like it's a big change, but it might be worth a reading (and a re-reading of the original) to see what exactly he does. You can also get it online if you buy an issue of his magazine Orson Scott Card's Inter-Galactic Medicine Show (oscIGMS.com). I'll...be waiting until it comes out in the new edition."
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