Xenocide (Ender, Book 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

~ Orson Scott Card (Author) "<Today one of the brothers asked me: Is it a terrible prison, not to be able to move from the place where you're standing?>..." (more)
Key Phrases: little doctor, battle school, father tongue, Han Fei-tzu, Master Han, Lusitania Fleet (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Orson Scott Card's Xenocide is a space opera with verve. In this continuation of Ender Wiggin's story, the Starways Congress has sent a fleet to immolate the rebellious planet of Lusitania, home to the alien race of pequeninos, and home to Ender Wiggin and his family. Concealed on Lusitania is the only remaining Hive Queen, who holds a secret that may save or destroy humanity throughout the galaxy. Familiar characters from the previous novels continue to grapple with religious conflicts and family squabbles while inventing faster-than-light travel and miraculous virus treatments. Throw into the mix an entire planet of mad geniuses and a self-aware computer who wants to be a martyr, and it's hard to guess who will topple the first domino. Due to the densely woven and melodramatic nature of the story, newcomers to Ender's tale will want to start reading this series with the first books, Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. --Brooks Peck

From Publishers Weekly

Card returns to the highly popular, award-winning story of Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, the boy wonder who saved humanity from alien invasion and, guilt-ridden over his near-total destruction of the alien species, has now become a sort of traveling conscience. This third Ender novel picks up where Speaker for the Dead left off: on the planet Lusitania, Ender and the other human colonists strive to neutralize the "descolada," a possibly sentient virus that adapts itself rapidly to every attack. Meanwhile, tensions are rising between the colonists and the indigenous "pequeninos," who rely on the descolada for their survival; and the fleet sent by Starways Congress to destroy the rebellious colony closes in with its doomsday weapon. With the help of their family, their pequenino friends, and Jane (an artificial intelligence living in the galactic computer network), Ender and his sister Valentine race against time to resolve these crises. The plot is sometimes compelling, but the novel's many flaws make the book more often dull and irritating. Card's style is openly didactic, and when his characters do veer away from lengthy philosophical and scientific ruminations, they venture into contrived personality conflicts and endless self-deprecation. Some, notably Ender, Valentine and the wonderchild Wang-mu, are simply too good to be true--too smart, too reasonable, too kind and generous. The reader quickly tires of such impossible perfection.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books (August 15, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812509250
• ISBN-13: 978-0812509250
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (227 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #29,738 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 3 in The Ender Quartet Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Philosophical and ethical issues---I loved it!, July 23, 1999

By A Customer

It seems the reviewers of this book are divided into two camps. Some hated the book because it doesn't live up to Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, because the "plot" is boring and minimal, because it's too long and drags, etc. Others rate Xenocide highly because of its well developed characters and its treatment of ethical issues. Both views are valid to some extent, but if you're able to accept this book for what it is, then you'll find it's a superb book, well worth the time to read it.

Ender's Game is all about Ender's childhood development, as he trains to become the savior of humanity. Speaker for The Dead explores some larger issues as it tracks Ender's healing of Novinha's dysfunction family, and the plot is kept going partially through the mysteries concerning the pequininos. Xenocide is different from both of these in that there's no real main character, and very little plot; instead, the focus of the story is the dillema faced by the three sentient species of Lusitania. Within this framework, Card explores a number of unusual ethical questions, such as whether human survival justifies the extermination of another species, and whether fear of the unknown will always be a barrier when interacting with those unlike ourselves. He also develops the complex web of love and hatred within Novinha's family, and the nature of the relationships within it. At times it was almost painful to read about the emotional states of the characters, so well did Card depict it. Yet I was completely hooked from the start, and I marvel at his ability to write about some very abstract issues within a science fiction setting.

If anything, the situation Card created was too hopeless, and once things started resolving the plot became a bit incredulous. One reviewer suggested that Card wrote himself into a corner and had to resort to cheap plot devices to save himself, and that's certainly how it looks to me. Happily, this occurs so near the end it doesn't detract much from the overall value of the book. (However, the consequences are compounded in the final book, Children of the Mind, which is the only one of the four I do not recommend reading.)

I enjoyed Xenocide as much as, if not more than Ender's Game and SftD. (One has to admit that Ender's Game, fantastic as it is, is much more simplistic and lightweight than Xenocide.) As long as you don't enter with undue expectations and you are willing to explore some tough ethical issues, then you'll see the merits of this book, perhaps the most human novel Card has written.

56 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Card continues to escalate the difficulty and seriousness, July 18, 2000

By	Robert James (Culver City, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Ender's Game" is a rapid-fire, tremendously adventurous novel with a rip-roaring end. "Speaker for the Dead" is more challenging, as it turns a murder mystery into a philosophical quest. "Xenocide" goes even further up the difficulty scale, and should not be read unless a copy of the final novel, "Children of the Mind," is close at hand. "Xenocide" takes the issues of religion, racism, genocide, love, family, insanity, redemption, and the nature of the universe as its subject matter; a truly amazing mix, as you might guess. But it's not really a stand-alone novel; when you come to the end, you may feel as I did that Card cheated with a deus ex machina at the end. He didn't; I think he just decided to chop the novel off and publish it, then publish the second half as "Children of the Mind." My anger at the ending quickly faded when I started "Children of the Mind"; clearly, "Xenocide" was not the end of the story. I loved the entire Ender Quartet, even if it was hard going for many readers to shift from "Ender's Game" to "Speaker for the Dead." Card has produced a philosophical masterpiece of science fiction in this series, and one that is only matched by his "Pastwatch Redemption" in its scale and importance in his writings. One of the few genre writers worth re-reading in his or her entirety, Card continues to amaze with the breadth and depth of his creations.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous story marred by absurd ending, April 16, 2003

By	Patrick L. Randall "Big Irish Guy" (Silver Spring, MD) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    (VINE VOICE)

"Xenocide" continues the compelling storyline begun in "Speaker for the Dead". Having violated the strict policy of the Starways Congress regarding interference with indigenous species, the human colony on the planet Lusitania has been targeted for dissolution. The added factor of the existence of the killer (and highly contagious) genetic virus, Descolada, on Lusitania has led the Congress to order to the planet be destroyed before the colonists or other indigenous life can leave and spread the virus elsewhere. On Lusitania, a group of colonists, led by Ender Wiggin and his adopted family, are in a race against time to find an antidote to the Descolada (not just a 'fix' like they are using currently) and find a way to stop the Fleet that is being sent to destroy the planet. The official full partnership between the 'piggies' species and the humans threatens to break apart under the stress of the events surrounding the Descolada and arrival of the Fleet.

"Xenocide" is, on may levels, as equally captivating as "Speaker for the Dead" because author Orson Scott Card focuses on what he does best, character development and character interactions. Such focus is what made "Speaker for the Dead" and "Ender's Game" spectacular novels and Nebula award winners. "Xenocide" keeps much of that momentum going. The politics on the planet among the species (the Buggers have also been reborn there) are quite compelling. The efforts of the high-minded members of the human and piggie species to prevent the ignition of a bloody civil war caused by ignorant members of both species is both harrowing and suspenseful. The events take place 30 years after "Speaker for the Dead" and Novinha's children are all grown now and play major roles in the resolution of this conflict. Seeing how they have evolved from the broken children when Ender first arrived in "Speaker..." is one of the more satisfying aspects of "Xenocide". The paths in life they have chosen are wholly believable and the reader can see that, without Ender's intercession decades earlier, these children might never had the opportunity to make the choices they make here.

This book is nearly 600 pages long, but powers forward at a rapid clip until about the last 100 pages. It is there that "Xenocide" goes on an existential path that would continue into, and plague, "Children of the Mind". Without revealing any plot details, it can be said that this literary choice of Card's dramatically slows the momentum created by the previous 2 1/2 books. Since it only occurs over the last 100 pages, it doesn't slow the reader down so much that they would be compelled to put the book down. It does, however, make reading the sequel, "Children of the Mind", more difficult.

Card seemingly wanted to explore a higher meaning in the overall story arc with this development. It just seems unnecessary because the character-driven stories he had told up to this point clearly revealed a greater meaning that just simply science fiction novels would. Complaints aside, "Xenocide" is still an excellent book and a good read for anyone who appreciated what "Speaker for the Dead" stood for.