Shadows in Flight

Discuss all things pertaining to the EnderVerse milieu.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Gravity Defier » Tue Jan 31, 2012 5:12 pm

I just placed an order for my copy; this is the first EG I've bought for myself since...ever. My first EG was bought by my parents for English in high school, the rest were Christmas/birthday/Pweb gifts.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby neo-dragon » Tue Jan 31, 2012 9:52 pm

It's the first Ender novel I've bought for myself since Shadow Puppets.

The last two were gifts from OSC. 8)
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Syphon the Sun » Wed Feb 01, 2012 10:53 am

Silly me decided to read the entire Shadow series to prep for this book. Except, work stuff came up and I'm not through it, yet. So it's sitting there on my coffee table taunting me.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby thoughtreader » Fri Feb 03, 2012 3:51 am

MANY SPOILERS!!



I just finished it.

I read most of it then stopped for about a week at the beginning of the last chapter, I think it was because of how short it was and that I didn't want it to end. I liked the story overall, not my favorite EG book but I enjoyed seeing the kids come into their own, learning more about the hive queen and her interactions with the drones and workers. I did like the solution Ender came up with to save the children.
I didn't like who short it was I felt like Card could have added so much or just made more of what he wrote if it was just a little longer.
So somebody tell me: what exactly killed the Hive Queen? Is it supposed to be the Descolada? Is that what OSC wants us to extrapolate?
this story took place 400 (450?) years after the third invasions, but they said the queen only died about 100 years ago. I'm not sure what the normal life expectancy of a HQ is but she may have just died of old age, but not leaving a viable queen to replace herself seems odd. All the cocoons were dead, but when did they die?

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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Gravity Defier » Sun Feb 19, 2012 8:32 pm

Why were Bean's last words,"I love Petra," instead of, "I love you?" Is it because he hadn't said it to her in SotG? That's silly. He just made the same mistake twice.
Re-read that part; it was "I love her because she gave me you." It was an ILY to the kids, as well, and in a way, a bigger one than the declaration of love to her.



Not having had much time to really analyze things, my knee-jerk reaction is it was an enjoyable book, I feel like it went a ways in correcting the annoying habit OSC via Bean had of downplaying Ender's worth, skills, contributions, etc., and the kids were fun enough, though it felt like the characters of Ender and Sergeant were wildly inconsistent. Also, it's kind of cool to see how Lusitania started, assuming that is Lusitania and Carlotta ends up being the genetic Eve of the planet.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby elfprince13 » Sun Feb 19, 2012 11:11 pm

I guess if Ender was 12 during the final battle, then Bean was about 10, right? If Bean left Earth at age 16 in 2210, then the final battle was in 2204, and the events of EG up until the end of the war would span about 2198 to 2204 since Ender was 6 in the beginning, so we're both right. :)

I suggested the 2190s because I was trying to reconcile it with a statement made in Xenocide, where Valentine says that she and Peter created their online identities in the 22nd century, which is as far as I recall the only other reference to an actual date in the series.

Yeah, I've put too much thought into this.

ETA: This also means that we could put actual years into the EG/ES timeline.
I thought I remembered reading somewhere vaguely official that it was 2170 or so,
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby UnnDunn » Mon Feb 20, 2012 4:55 am

Also, it's kind of cool to see how Lusitania started, assuming that is Lusitania and Carlotta ends up being the genetic Eve of the planet.
Pretty sure Milagre was an official ColMin colony, settled by Brazilians. No way is this planet Lusitania.

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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Luet » Mon Feb 20, 2012 9:13 am

Why were Bean's last words,"I love Petra," instead of, "I love you?" Is it because he hadn't said it to her in SotG? That's silly. He just made the same mistake twice.
Re-read that part; it was "I love her because she gave me you." It was an ILY to the kids, as well, and in a way, a bigger one than the declaration of love to her.
I totally agree with that being how it was meant.

Also, it's kind of cool to see how Lusitania started, assuming that is Lusitania and Carlotta ends up being the genetic Eve of the planet.
This crossed my mind and it would have been cool but unless he does some huge amounts of retconning (which is possible), I don't think it fits with how he set up Lusitania in SftD.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Taalcon » Mon Feb 20, 2012 11:10 am

I don't see Lusitania in SiF. OSC has said has considered writing another SiF-sized novel where 'about their development of their new world and the creation of a new Queenless formic species to populate it along with the new species of human. But then the three of them [Ender, Sergeant, Carlotta] will LEAVE so their grandchildren and great grand-children can populate and develop their world as they wish."

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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Gravity Defier » Mon Feb 20, 2012 11:36 am

Yeah, it probably isn't but I thought I read a passage about the Hundred Worlds not actually all being settled at this point and I took off with the idea that maybe this one, being such an ideal planet, was scouted out. But that wouldn't allow for the drones to survive, let alone explain what would happen to their ship that's in orbit.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby UnnDunn » Tue Feb 21, 2012 1:29 am

Yeah, it probably isn't but I thought I read a passage about the Hundred Worlds not actually all being settled at this point and I took off with the idea that maybe this one, being such an ideal planet, was scouted out. But that wouldn't allow for the drones to survive, let alone explain what would happen to their ship that's in orbit.
That's not to say there is no genetic link between the Leguminotes and Lusitania. I've speculated in the past that the Riberao family on Lusitania could be descended from the Leguminotes, given that they share the Leguminotes' ambitiousness and appear to have at least some measure of their superhuman intellect.

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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Bean_wannabe » Mon Feb 27, 2012 8:16 am

Just finished reading after my copy arrived on Sunday (dratted UK release dates). Spoilers ahead! Like the story, though didn't like the massive retconning done towards the Hive Queens' motives, etc. Also, I thought that it was established somewhere in SftD that the Hive Queen couldn't lie to Ender because everything was shared over the link?

Also, did anyone else notice the inconsistency with Bean supposedly being the one that chose Achilles for Poke's crew, when ES says that Poke did, and Bean advised against it?

Other than that, a good story but it does seem to somewhat trivialise the point of the Ender storyline - if the Formics are still alive, Ender re-establishing them isn't as important.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Gravity Defier » Mon Feb 27, 2012 10:11 am

Also, I thought that it was established somewhere in SftD that the Hive Queen couldn't lie to Ender because everything was shared over the link?
It was my understanding, reading the older books, that she didn't realize she was lying or withholding information or distorting things but she did it constantly, as whatever circumstances changed her "memory" of things and her needs. It always felt like the truth to her, even if it wasn't objectively so.

I could be remembering that incorrectly, though. Been a while.

But yeah. I'm not sure I like how Ender basically wastes his whole life over guilt that could have been at least partially lessened if someone had just bothered to tell him, "Hey, turns out you didn't wipe out the whole species besides the cocoon you're carrying!"
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Catalyst85 » Wed Feb 29, 2012 10:09 pm

I could be very mistaken, but I don't believe that the world is set up, at all, to be Lusitania. Rather, I believe that it's to set up the Descoladores(sp?). The molecular communication (whatever it was called with the organelles, p. 230 in SIF), mixed with formic mind-speak, mixed with the Leguminotes... and those organelles sound awefully like the Descolada AND it leads to the genetic manipulation to cure the giantism of the Leguminotes. Maybe this has already been stated somewhere else. It seemed obvious to me, but I could be very wrong.

Edit: What I was trying to say is that the Ark World becomes the Descoladores. I'm probably wrong, but it seemed right to me.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Catalyst85 » Wed Feb 29, 2012 10:14 pm

...and the terraforming nature of the Formics coming into play leads to more connections between The Ark and the Descoladores.

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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Bean_wannabe » Thu Mar 01, 2012 2:43 am

The time gap from the end of SiF to the start of SftD isn't long enough for the planet to be colonised and the descoloda to be developed and deployed - how long was it stated in CofM that the piggies had been infected for?
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby UnnDunn » Thu Mar 01, 2012 12:21 pm

Well it's not as if OSC has been paying too much attention to the timeline.

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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby neo-dragon » Thu Mar 08, 2012 4:42 pm

I've always assumed (perhaps baselessly) that the descolada infected Lusitania tens or hundreds of thousands of years before SftD, So I don't expect it to be revealed that Bean's offspring are in any way tied into the Piggies or Descoladores origins, but I could of course be wrong.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Taft » Fri Mar 16, 2012 9:51 am

Having read SiF...let's just say that my opinion is that it is a very good thing that Card is handing things over to other writers.

The biggest disappointment is that there is no clear connection to the Descoladores (the thread that Card was purportedly dealing with in this story). Other than that, there is a big inconsistency with the "spare" Hive Queen...the story essentially telling me that there was at least one, possibly more, alive for 300-350 years after EG kills any punch at the end of the initial novel.

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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Luet » Fri Mar 16, 2012 2:58 pm

Taft, while it's true that originally SiF was supposed to be a sort of sequel to both CotM and SotG, somewhere along the way that got dropped and it just became a sequel to SotG which is why there was not mention of the descoladores storyline. There seems to be future plans for a novel called Shadows Alive that will (hopefully) tie up the remaining loose ends. You can read some more about this and when the changes were made in the other SiF thread, starting from this post.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Tiny genius » Sun Mar 18, 2012 4:19 am

You found EG because you had to read it for English. Lucky. The books I get for English are pure kuso. I am signed up to the Vision Australia library and they send me random books based on my interests profile. EG was sent to my brother but once I got a read I never let it go.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Tiny genius » Sun Mar 18, 2012 4:41 am

To neo-dragon> Gifts from OSC are you serious? I'm new and maybe it's established here that you're a personal friend of the guy but I don't know. How can I get in contact with him I wish to kiss his feet or some such thing.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Taft » Sun Mar 18, 2012 10:04 pm

Taft, while it's true that originally SiF was supposed to be a sort of sequel to both CotM and SotG, somewhere along the way that got dropped and it just became a sequel to SotG which is why there was not mention of the descoladores storyline. There seems to be future plans for a novel called Shadows Alive that will (hopefully) tie up the remaining loose ends. You can read some more about this and when the changes were made in the other SiF thread, starting from this post.
Ok, I'll chalk that up to bad marketing and/or lag. I guess the other rub is that it really feels like Card is just dumping stories out there to make money without any concern for either passing canon consistency (if this story is taken at face value, Ender was duped by the Hive Queen) or, honestly, respect for the strength(s) of the first novels.

I'll also say that the three kids in the story felt awfully like Peter, Val, and Ender at the start of EG ("Cincinattius" is Peter, with the other two taking after their namesakes)...to the point that it was a distraction. It's not that the characters are fundamentally flawed in that regard...just that it feels like Card did a copy/paste operation. With that said, the whole Shadow series has been increasingly depressing as time has gone on. I simply haven't been enjoying it, I've gotten the feeling that Card is just driving the car until it breaks, so to speak.

As it is, I pointedly declined to buy or read Gifts. I read Ender in Exile and didn't really mind it (I'd had some fellow fans arguing for the shorter timeframe on that planet for years, so that particular tweak didn't hit me too badly). But this...well, let's just say that it continued the long trend of Shadow books not being worth my time.

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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby UnnDunn » Sun Mar 18, 2012 10:49 pm

Gifts was actually alright, if only because it was designed and marketed as the novella it was always supposed to be. You go in knowing you're going to get a nice little vignette, and that's exactly what you get.

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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Tiny genius » Mon Mar 19, 2012 1:20 am

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you, Taft. While the Ender books were definitely concerned with "higher matters" such as philosophy, morality, sentience, humanity and so on, I did enjoy the Shadow books enormously. I haven't read SiF but I have to say, it was the concept of war and tactics at an extremely high level that first drew me to EG and while still containing personal matters the Shadow series has kept this trend up. Every book is filled with maneuver, tactics and the subtleties of war.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby UnnDunn » Mon Mar 26, 2012 11:20 pm

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you, Taft. While the Ender books were definitely concerned with "higher matters" such as philosophy, morality, sentience, humanity and so on, I did enjoy the Shadow books enormously. I haven't read SiF but I have to say, it was the concept of war and tactics at an extremely high level that first drew me to EG and while still containing personal matters the Shadow series has kept this trend up. Every book is filled with maneuver, tactics and the subtleties of war.
SiF has literally none of that. Fair warning. ;)

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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby neo-dragon » Tue Apr 03, 2012 9:31 pm

To neo-dragon> Gifts from OSC are you serious? I'm new and maybe it's established here that you're a personal friend of the guy but I don't know. How can I get in contact with him I wish to kiss his feet or some such thing.
I've never met the man.

I just happened to post some stuff on his forum that he found helpful just prior to his finishing "Shadow of the Giant" and "Ender in Exile". In both cases he mentioned my name in the acknowledgments and sent me signed copies. But I don't like to brag about it. :angel:

Also, did you guys know that the Enhanced E-book Edition is available for the Nook, and even the Kobo.
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Shadows in Flight - Enhanced Ebook

Postby philoticweb » Tue Apr 03, 2012 9:46 pm

Nice spot, neo-dragon! I was just working on a review about it!

Image

The Enhanced Ebook version is HEAVILY abridged. Entire pages from the hardcover version are missing. The Enhanced Ebook script was adapted by Jake Black.

It contains 39 new pieces of artwork by Nick Greenwood. The artwork is not the same as the Shadows in Flight Sneak Preview Concept Art by Nick Greenwood found on intergalacticmedicineshow.com

It has 3 sections of Additional Content "added by Orson Scott Card specifically for this enhanced Ebook version." The Additional Content is compiled in a section at the end. There are two pieces of content from what the Ebook calls Chapter 3 and one piece from Chapter 9. There are three links in the Ebook (two in Chapter 3, one in Chapter 9) that allow you to read the content in the correct place in the story instead of all at the end.

I won't go too in depth with the Additional Content. I would say that the content is short. The three sections basically tell a story about Petra's hologram to her children. It sheds a little light on her relationship with Bean. The section also alludes heavily to another character having control in the life of Bean and his family: !!!!Jane!!!!

This book was released on March 1, 2012. The hardcover version was released on January 17, 2012. The full hardcover version is currently $13.40 on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The Ebook version is $11.99.

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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Eaquae Legit » Wed Apr 04, 2012 11:04 am

You know, Jason, SOME of us are just content to have our names in a book. No sir, we're not jealous of being sent books, that is for SNOBS.

:grumble:

Anyhow, I just finished Shadows in Flight, and I was disappointed at the retconning. It was very much a follower to the other Shadow books, some very heavy-handed philosophising. At first, I thought "oh, here we go with an Ender-Val-Peter trio" but I was pleased to see that notion disabused somewhat. The retconning of the buggers really bothers me, although that might be coloured by my frustration with another series' retcons (Pern). I just don't LIKE it when stuff like that happens. And it leaves so much open that there had better be a follow-up, although I don't see how it could work! It's just frustrating.

The story felt rushed and underdeveloped. There were parts I enjoyed a lot, but on the whole it was kind of meh.




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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Tiny genius » Wed Apr 11, 2012 12:57 am

I just happened to post some stuff on his forum that he found helpful just prior to his finishing "Shadow of the Giant" and "Ender in Exile". In both cases he mentioned my name in the acknowledgments and sent me signed copies. But I don't like to brag about it.
Nice, I didn't hear about the books until long after their completion and the audio editions I have don't include the acknowledgements.
That's great for you and I would give anything to have done the same.

...I wonder how near OSC is to finishing the last one...

Oh, and thanks for the warning Unndunn, I'd already gathered that from what I've heard of the storyline, but thanks.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Rei » Tue Apr 24, 2012 2:45 pm

I just finished reading it last night. I'm not sure I can accept it as canon. The reshaping of the buggers really, really, really bothers me because it basically negates the value of the books I far prefer, that being EG and the Speaker series. Spoilers:



If the buggers really are all simply slaves, oppressed by the Hive Queen, then Ender is a rube and The Hive Queen becomes propaganda of lies, encouraging this oppression of other free individuals. It also means that the scouring of Earth was done not caring if they were destroying sapient individuals or not; the Hive Queen has no qualms with mass murder. In short, the reasons for Ender's passion are void and the driving force of his life is a waste. All he is doing is helping to re-establish a totalitarian regime that really has no issues with killing everyone in the interests of subjugating all other beings.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby neo-dragon » Wed Apr 25, 2012 6:38 am


If the buggers really are all simply slaves, oppressed by the Hive Queen, then Ender is a rube and The Hive Queen becomes propaganda of lies, encouraging this oppression of other free individuals. It also means that the scouring of Earth was done not caring if they were destroying sapient individuals or not; the Hive Queen has no qualms with mass murder. In short, the reasons for Ender's passion are void and the driving force of his life is a waste. All he is doing is helping to re-establish a totalitarian regime that really has no issues with killing everyone in the interests of subjugating all other beings.
A lot of people seems to have similar feelings (based on posts on Hatrack and Amazon reviews) but I don't really see how it's different from what's established in Xenocide. We've known since then that the Hive Queen basically dominates over the workers by the sheer force or her Auia, or something like that. She even tried to do it to Ender during the Third Invasion.
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Tiny genius » Thu May 10, 2012 1:59 am

Yeah, I think it just didn't hit as hard until the revelations in SiF, which I just finished. But you are right and it even describes first-hand the oppression of the HQ's presence in your mind.

Apart from this piece of nastiness, I enjoyed SiF. But did OSC really realise what he was saying about Ender's life when he wrote this?
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby KennEnder » Thu May 10, 2012 10:32 am

Art by Nick Greenwood? OMG. If Nick is from Utah (and he seems to be at least LDS, so there is some chance), I think I know him! Incredible what a small world this is!
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Re: Shadows in Flight

Postby Eaquae Legit » Fri May 11, 2012 9:35 am


If the buggers really are all simply slaves, oppressed by the Hive Queen, then Ender is a rube and The Hive Queen becomes propaganda of lies, encouraging this oppression of other free individuals. It also means that the scouring of Earth was done not caring if they were destroying sapient individuals or not; the Hive Queen has no qualms with mass murder. In short, the reasons for Ender's passion are void and the driving force of his life is a waste. All he is doing is helping to re-establish a totalitarian regime that really has no issues with killing everyone in the interests of subjugating all other beings.
A lot of people seems to have similar feelings (based on posts on Hatrack and Amazon reviews) but I don't really see how it's different from what's established in Xenocide. We've known since then that the Hive Queen basically dominates over the workers by the sheer force or her Auia, or something like that. She even tried to do it to Ender during the Third Invasion.
The implication that I always took from that, though, was that while she dominated them, if she didn't there wouldn't be anything there. Husks, essentially. She controls them like I control my fingers by force of my soul/will/"aiua", but if you cut them off, they'd just be lumps of dead flesh and bone. I don't enslave my sapient fingers.
"Only for today, I will devote 10 minutes of my time to some good reading, remembering that just as food is necessary to the life of the body, so good reading is necessary to the life of the soul." -- Pope John XXIII


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