Ender in Exile: The review of a prodigal

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Jayelle
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Ender in Exile: The review of a prodigal

Postby Jayelle » Sun Mar 14, 2010 12:56 pm

Perhaps it goes without saying, but this contains ***spoilers*** for Ender in Exile (and most other Enderverse books).

I am calling this a prodigal review because, despite being on this EG board for almost a decade, it had been about 4 years since I had read any of the Enderverse stories.
I was very disillusioned by Shadow of the Giant, so when EiE came out, I didn't bother to read it. But, recently I re-read Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, then I read EiE. This is my return to the Enderverse.

EiE is a difficult story. There is no way it could be read in chronological order since it is actually a tie in to the entire Shadow series and the entire Speaker series. I liked that. I was happy that Card didn't go back and try to write something completely unconnected to what had already been written.
But, EiE’s difficulty also comes from it being written so many years after EG. It seemed like Card had a hard time getting back into Ender’s head. To read the two books side by side was jarring. The same Ender who was chewing on his hand, suspicious of Graff and seemed very, very childlike despite his intelligence did not match up with Ender who gave long speeches about his feelings to Graff and knew how to manipulate those around him without feeling guilt. The Ender in EG was constantly unsure of himself and very much lived in his head. This didn’t quite match up with Ender’s dialogues with several people in EiE.

The themes of EiE had merit. His death-wish for not only killing the buggers but also his classmates was an intriguing and I liked that Ender needed to be beaten the same way he beat Bonzo and Stilson.
Ender’s alienation from Val and the separation of Peter in his mind (Peter-as-child and Peter-as-Hegemon) was a great foreshadowing (retroshadowing?) of The Children of the Mind.
The execution of these themes was, unfortunately, not as good as I would have hoped. Card’s writing has become too much “Tell” and not enough “Show”, it seems like he has forgotten how to get inside the minds of his characters and let things develop organically. I would have understood Ender’s death wish better if it had been more subtle. Spelling it out made it forced and awkward.

In all, I give it a 5.5 out of 10.
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Re: Ender in Exile: The review of a prodigal

Postby neo-dragon » Sun Mar 14, 2010 1:29 pm

It seemed like Card had a hard time getting back into Ender’s head. To read the two books side by side was jarring. The same Ender who was chewing on his hand, suspicious of Graff and seemed very, very childlike despite his intelligence did not match up with Ender who gave long speeches about his feelings to Graff and knew how to manipulate those around him without feeling guilt. The Ender in EG was constantly unsure of himself and very much lived in his head. This didn’t quite match up with Ender’s dialogues with several people in EiE.
I agree that Ender seemed wise beyond his years in EiE. I think that OSC was very deliberately trying to bridge the gap between the child we see in EG and the man in SftD. I suppose whether he did so successfully or not is open to debate.
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Postby mr_thebrain » Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:29 pm

well, i don't know about you guys, but i don't know any children that have committed genocide (xenocide--- whatever). i don't even know any children who have killed other children. so i don't have a clue how it would effect his/her mindset, or how it would age them. so who's to say that the child in EG wouldn't become the child in EiE very quickly?

as for his writing style i have to agree, it's not the same as it was and it's not really a change for the better. but with experience i'm sure how he approaches writing has changed drastically from what it was then to what it is now.

still, i enjoyed EiE quite a bit. even if it's not on par with EG or SftD.

I do think that the whole ES series was wrong and the blight of the original series and therefore EiE would have been a much different (and perhaps much more enjoyable) story.
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Postby chromesthesia » Sun Apr 11, 2010 12:47 pm

Yeah. EIE bothered me deeply. It just wasn't as good as Ender's Game. Worse, OSC wants to change the original story to match EiE, which makes me think, do not do it! The original was just find. Do not pull a George Lucas!

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Postby locke » Sun Apr 18, 2010 4:13 pm

Very well stated, Jayelle.

I also think the transition from Ender was problematic not because it was bridging between EG Ender and "wiser" SFTD Ender, but because Ender seemed more worldly and older than he did in SFTD or any of the sequels, he also seemed more intensely set in his ways and his beliefs than the Ender of SFTD.

I would expect Ender to make big mistakes in socializing with people on the ship, with Val, with people on the planet. Instead he navigates all these situations with a delicate perfection he never possessed in the other books. And considering the deeply dysfunctional socialization he experienced in battle school, and the way he behaved as a six year old, I simply don't believe that Ender would respond--ever--how he responded in EiE. Much of the change that comes over Ender, in my opinion, is done after he encounters the hive queen. and yet this story has him behaving more like post-hive queen than pre-hive queen throughout the book.

I actually think that the interesting story was not so much the story on the ship, but how Ender governed, how he screwed up, grew, learned to understand how communities and people actually work (rather than the deeply f-ed up battle school community). If Ender applied his understanding of battleschool community dynamics to the actual community it would have been a fascinating blowup and would show him to be human, rather than perfect.

I'm not so certain I'm a fan of Ender wanting to martyr himself either. It seems a more Bean thing to do.

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Postby chromesthesia » Mon Apr 19, 2010 1:38 pm

I was trying to read EiE at the supermarket today.
Why are so many people in that book so... self satisfied and swarmy in their dialog? It drives me crazy. Everyone sounds so sure of their pure and total smartness. Plus the dialog was painfully unrealistic. Way more like preaching than talking. Urg. it drives me so hardcore up a tree :x I want OSC to step back, pull himself out of the characters and let the characters be themselves instead of his political puppets.

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Postby neo-dragon » Mon Apr 19, 2010 3:32 pm

I was trying to read EiE at the supermarket today...
Seriously, why? You've made it clear at every opportunity that you can't stand the book, as well as why. At this point I can actually write your posts for you.
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Postby chromesthesia » Mon Apr 19, 2010 5:17 pm

I know, but being insanely optimistic I keep hoping I was missing something and that it would magically turn good and engaging. Because if a book is bad (Gate to Women's Country comes to mind) I often wonder, was it me? Is the problem my perspective of this book? Am I somehow biased?
Plus it's not as if I don't agree that monogamy equals good for children and society. It's just is a LOVELESS monogamy really better? So when it comes to that I end up running screaming and going AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGG! Especially since those sort of loveless, yucky monogamous marriages probably caused most of the problems OSC grumbles about in every single article and book.

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Postby neo-dragon » Mon Apr 19, 2010 5:55 pm

I know, but being insanely optimistic I keep hoping I was missing something and that it would magically turn good and engaging.
You know that that truly is one definition of insanity, right? Repeating something again and again and expecting a different outcome. :P
"Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic."
- Frank Herbert's 'Dune'

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Postby chromesthesia » Mon Apr 19, 2010 8:50 pm

Well, yeah, but sometimes I've re-read a book I hated or watched a movie I didn't like and realize that it was not so bad.
But usually the opposite ensues. It still STAYS BAD. Or worse, a book I like (Prayer for Owen Meany, She's Come Undone) turns into a terrible book on a rereading.

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Postby locke » Sun May 02, 2010 6:36 pm

You know that that truly is one definition of insanity, right? Repeating something again and again and expecting a different outcome. :P
*looks around room*

*counts nine lightbulbs*

I'll take insanity cause 10,000 repetitions by Edison gave us the incandescent lightbulb because eventually he did get a different result. :)
So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

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Postby Psudo » Wed May 12, 2010 4:21 am

10,000 repetitions by Edison gave us the incandescent lightbulb because eventually he did get a different result. :)
Those were variations on a theme rather than identical repetitions. Edison tried 10,000 different filament materials before he found one that lit well and lasted.

Even so, we use different filament materials today than he used in the beginning because we were able to discover the scientific principles behind their performance and choose an optimum filament material. In fact, stores are full of different bulbs with different "optimums" based on different priorities, all of which are better than Edison's trial-and-error original.

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Postby Paul » Wed Oct 27, 2010 2:28 am

Sorry to dig up such an old thread, but I thought it better than starting a new one.
Plus it's not as if I don't agree that monogamy equals good for children and society. It's just is a LOVELESS monogamy really better? So when it comes to that I end up running screaming and going AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGG! Especially since those sort of loveless, yucky monogamous marriages probably caused most of the problems OSC grumbles about in every single article and book.
I tend to agree with you chrome. OSC's little political rant seemed out of place. I believe a loving relationship between the child's two parents is probably the best environment to raise a child. But I also believe two loving gay parents (or any other non traditional families for that matter) will be a much better environment than a broken home. I've had friends that have grown up in both families where the parents went through a messy divorce, and ones where their parents only stayed married "for the kids." Seems to me that both types can leave deep scars. It really makes me appreciate my fairly normal childhood.

But non-traditional families can also work well. A year or so before my sister met her now husband, he and his current girl friend got pregnant. They broke up before the child was born. Here is the interesting part. Both remained good friends. A year later, the mother was my sister's maid of honor when they got married. Not to much later, the father was the best man in the mother's wedding.

Fast forwards 7 years. My (step) nephew now has 2 little sisters. Each born within a year of each other. Over the years, the two families have moved across the country twice to make sure that their son was always near both parents. First from the midwest to new jersey, then to the twin cities. To this day, neither family has ever been in court to determine custody, it has always been shared. Both sets of parents did their very best to keep their son out of any arguments they might have had.

And now from another angle. A small population on an alien planet is attempting to form (one of?) humanity's first colony. But their numbers are few, meant to man a warship, not start a colony. To make matters worst, only 25 percent of the population are women.

Now I'm going to suspend my disbelief for a moment. Any children this colony has should be raised in in a traditional family, so 50 percent of the population pair off and get start families. What happens to the other 50 percent? The population is already very small, it would be a horrible idea to trash away half of the population's DNA. If anything their genetic stock should be used to artificially inseminate women. The lucky few men that did get married need only agree to raise all of their wives children.

That being said, its been years since id read any of the other ender books. Overall I thought this did a great job of reconnecting the two series. Other than this one issue, I thought the book was great.


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