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GORDON 
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Posted on: Apr. 03 2007,18:39 |
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I think everyone has read or knows about Ender's Game... and Leisher, I highly recommend you pick it up.... but few people know that the direct sequels to that book sort of sucked. Nothing like the original, and for all intents and purposes the protagonist from the first book was just completely beaten down by life.
But then, years later, Orson Scott Card wrote a parallel book to Ender's Game called Ender's Shadow. It is about the origins and parallel actions of an associate of Ender's named Bean during his time at the Battle School and the ensuing war, and it is truly a book in the same spirit of the much beloved original.
There are three more sequels, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, and Shadow of the Giant, and they were also very enjoyable reads.
And you can pretty much see a distinct line between which books were written pre-9/11, and which were post... and Ender even shows back up at the very end.
Anyway, in summary, Ender book excellent, sequels sucked (Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind), and Shadow series is excellent.
++++++++++
And really I haven't read those other books in over ten years,... I may reread them to see if I feel any different now that I'm older and wiser.
Edited by GORDON on Apr. 03 2007,18:40
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GORDON
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Posts: 36125
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Posted on: Apr. 03 2007,18:41 |
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And oh yeah, looks like OSC has authorized a graphic novel from the Ender universe:
http://www.dabelbrothers.com/index.p....leid=47
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TheCatt
Top 2%
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Posted on: Apr. 03 2007,19:32 |
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If only he weren't insane.
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TPRJones
I saw The Fault in our Stars opening night.
Group: Privateers
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Posted on: Apr. 03 2007,20:04 |
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Don't reread them. I think they're okay, but I they are nothing like Ender's Game, and if you hated them then you'll very likely still hate them now. Lots of hippy crap in there.
The Shadow series has been a bit dissappointing, IMO. Not because they aren't good, they are, but because the first Shadow book was so fucking awesome that it's all downhill from there. I read Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow in parallel (switching back and forth in cronological chunks) and they're nearly airtight. Card took one story he told long ago and completely redid it into another very different story in the most masterful turn of story retelling I've ever seen.
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Vidi Perfutui Veni
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GORDON
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Posted on: Apr. 03 2007,20:35 |
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Well, the Bean books are different. Hegemon was still good, because it was a lot of war on Earth. Puppets was the weak book of the series, since it went away from most of the thriller stuff. And Giant... well, it left some loose ends, didn't it. I went to Card's website to see if there would be another book... I didn't find any mention of his current and future projects.
I did see, though, that he sells autographed hardcovers for CHEAP there. I just bought Giant in hardcover for $30 off amazon. I could have gotten an autographed copy from Card's site for $9.
Edited by GORDON on Apr. 03 2007,20:35
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GORDON
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Posted on: Jul. 16 2013,18:04 |
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Reread the entire universe of books... everything, including a few things that have been released since this thread was last updated.
1. Â "First Meetings in the Ender Universe." Â Of note are how Ender's parents met... more back story for Graff... and how Jane and Ender got introduced. Â Also includes the original "Ender's Game" short story, which brings nothing new and can be skipped unless you want to get a little insight into the evolution of the story itself.
2. Â "War of Gifts." Â What happens one Christmas day in Battleschool. Â Could be skipped without missing anything good, unless you want to see Ender pull off one more minor tactical victory.
3. Â "Shadows in Flight." Â The final story of the Bean tangent. Â Wraps up his story, and adds a little more insight into our favorite extinct race...
4. Â "Ender in Exile." Â Bridges the gap between Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, Â During which Ender aged from 12 to about 40. Â Good read, lots of Ender outmaneuvering some dicks in the fleet.
And, I reread those books that were the direct Ender sequels, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind.
What a difference 20 years of maturity makes in how you see a story...
WHen I read them in my early 20's, I remember them being slow and dull and was upset that they turned Ender into a "worn down old man." Â In my early 40's now, I don't see it that way at all. Â This is a grown-up story of a grown-up Ender written for grown-ups. Â Just because the books are not Ender being a tactical genius doesn't make the stories dull, as was my original assessment... these sequels are about people and how broken they can get and how they can be fixed and redemption. Â I really enjoyed them this time around.
Edited by GORDON on Jul. 16 2013,18:06
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GORDON
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Posted on: Oct. 23 2014,19:50 |
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So there's a new series in the Ender universe about the first time the Buggers attacked Earth. I picked up The First Formic War off the discount rack a while back, and read it, and hadn't realized it was book 1 of 3. It was a page-turner, though. Read the 300ish pages in 2 days.
It's completely new characters (about 100ish years before Ender was born) and they feel kind of familiar... the protagonist is a young, male mechanical genius who always seems to be out-thinking the adults around him, which sounds familiar, for some reason. But the story is good and the characters are likable and the second two books arrived today. Looks like they are next on my list since I finished the King book today.
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Vince
I make sweet, sweet love to my legally licenced copy of Microsoft Vista.
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Posted on: Oct. 24 2014,06:56 |
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I read the first of that series. May have to get back into them and read the rest.
Reading your older comments about the Ender books that followed Ender's Game, I had read the evolution of the stories and the Speaker for The Dead wasn't originally going to even be Ender. Was going to be a different series and Card went back and rewrote Ender's Game to set it up for Speaker at his publisher's suggestion. That's why they have such a different feel overall I think.
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