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Mar 22, 2008

Greg rated it:

I know several readers, myself included, who were blown away by Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. They then found the sequel, Speaker for the Dead, to be equally as riveting and eagerly reached for Xenocide, book three in the series, with the highest of expectations--only to be slammed with disappointment. This otherwise serviceable book, with an original premise and interesting characters, crashes to an unsatisfying and confusing ending that combines the worst attributes of deus ex machina and More...

3 comments like (23 people liked it)

Jan 10, 2011

Goldie rated it:

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0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 11, 2011

Christopher rated it:

Whoo, finished, finally. Sometimes you get sucked in a series and you just can't wait until its over because of the command over your whole attention that it has on you. Andrew Wiggin is somebody who we would all like to become; understanding, compassionate, brilliant, and charitable. Yet he is a tragic character who carries the burden of humanity on his shoulders, always taking on more responsibility than is seemed his share.

This final novel is the fast paced, engaging, climax to More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Nov 23, 2010

Jacob rated it:

The fleet sent by Starways Congress to destroy the planet Lusitania is getting closer. Any day now. No, really, it'll be here soon, promise! The good news is: Jane, the intelligent supercomputer program, has figured out faster-than-light travel, so the evacuation of Lusitania's native and foreign species is ongoing. The bad news: Congress is trying to shut Jane down. The Lusitania Fleet is on its way (really!). Ender is divided into three bodies (by-product of some near-literal deus ex ma More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 02, 2008

Shayna rated it:

Children of the Mind flows from the rest of the Ender saga. Aside from the issues that carry over from the previous book, there's less focus on all the philosophy in the universe and more story. It's mostly about Jane and her bid for survival along side all the peoples and aliens on the world of Lusitania. Like the other books, it's pretty enthralling and opens up the type of moral and philosophical issues that probably have entire sections of the library dedicated to understanding them.
T More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 19, 2007

Djuna rated it:

These books are a great combo of sci-fi and philosophy, but I feel like the Ender series begins with the best book and then they gradually lose appeal. The first book in the series was skillfully crafted to weave complex strategy lessons for a child, and I was very pleased with how clever the author was, with only a few areas that were a bit heavy-handed. The subsequent books got a bit more convoluted, and lost some of the brilliance. It seemed like Card spent most of his effort on coming up More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 10, 2008

Chris rated it:

Though a surprising percentage of this book consists of tedious expressions of characters' frustrations (such as Quara's incessant bitch-fests) or amazements (such as Jane's discoveries of her new-found senses). Many times throughout the book, I got bored of the endless unnecessary descriptions that really did nothing to move the plot forward or increase our understanding of the characters.

The events taking place in the book, for their part, were quite interesting and provided an ef More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 22, 2011

Kevin rated it:

I couldn't wait to finish this book. The Ender quartet started so strong and got progressively worse with each book. I hated who the characters became in this book (particularly Wang-Mu) and the long-winded monologues about the difficult love relationships got excessive. The tired philosophy and ruminations on the human condition were boring and unwanted.

Children of the Mind started with so much potential but it was poorly executed. I was really hoping to see the ruthless Peter emer More...

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Sep 26, 2011

Dr rated it:

Ender's game was really fun and interesting read. It made me excited to explore more of Card's work. With each subsequent book of the Ender Saga I have enjoyed it less and less.

Throughout the entire series there has been a strong drive to explore philosophical notions of war and survival and the connections between people. In Ender's game it is not too heavy handed and mostly submerged beneath the narrative. By Children of the Mind Card might as well be bludgeoning you over the head wi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 09, 2010

Jennifer rated it:

This is an incredible book. Definitely my favorite of the Ender Saga. The "God Whispers" alone are worth the read. I can't even describe how amazing this book is, but there are two sections in the book that do it for me.

1. Will the kind of love I have for you be enough? To reach out to you when I’m in need, and to try to be here for you when you need me back. And to feel such tenderness when I look at you that I want to stand between you and all the world: and yet also to More...

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Sep 19, 2010

Asa rated it:

Well, now I've finished the "Ender Quartet" (or saga, as it's called here) at a very leisurely pace. The first book, Ender's Game, was excellent. Second was Speaker For The Dead, which was great. Then there were Xenocide and this one, both of which were merely okay.

It seems that Xenocide and Children Of The Mind were originally meant to be one book. I suspect that if Xenocide had stayed within its own borders, it would have been much better. These two books are weighed down More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

May 16, 2010

Mark rated it:

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Apr 26, 2010

Bertrand rated it:

Orson Scott Card, auteur polémique s’il en est dans le milieu de la SF américaine, est dans le circuit depuis la fin des années 1970. Ses œuvres sont des remises en question permanentes de l’ordre établi où la définition de la morale et les problématiques religieuses tiennent une place de choix. Récompensé à plusieurs reprises par les prix les plus prestigieux, il est considéré – à tort ou à raison – comme l’un des écrivains de science-fiction les plus importants de notre époque. Son cycle d’End More...

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Mar 17, 2010

Dlora rated it:

I wanted more of Ender in this book, but it really was about what everyone thought about Ender and how Ender influenced what they did . . . while also racing to save Jane the dancer on the ansible waves, save the planet Luisitania from being annihilated by the M.D. device, save the whole sentient races from a new ruthless species that sent the descolada virus. Besides the racing plot, the story also included ideas that made me think and feelings that made my heart swell--ideas about marriage, More...

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Feb 25, 2010

bonnie rated it:

As expected based on reviews, Children of the Mind was a solid step down from its three predecessors (yes, I even liked Xenocide). Note: there are no specific spoilers here, but I do discuss certain structural elements of the book including its ending, so stop reading if you do not want to know these things.

Unlike the first 3 books, there were parts of this book I markedly did not like.

(1) the Jesus imagery, which I thought took away from the general religious overtone More...

1 comment like

Apr 14, 2009

Chris rated it:

In my mind, Children of the Mind and Xenocide together tell one story, and I can't help but lump them together and assign a single rating. Rather than write my thoughts again, here's what I wrote about Xenocide

"I loved this book. I had heard so many reviews about how weird Orson Scott Card got with the Ender series that I expected to hate it. After I finished this I quickly found a copy of Children of the Mind and completed the story. I don't know if it meets the standard of More...

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Jul 31, 2010

Neil rated it:

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0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 02, 2009

blake rated it:

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0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 31, 2010

Kristel rated it:

I find that the more of Card's novels I read, the less I like them. I enjoyed the story, as I did with the previous three in this Quartet (the other four Ender-universe novels I suspect I won't ever pick up), but there's so much talking and so little doing. I just wished the characters would shut up and get on with things.

I think I'd have appreciated the moral quandries more when I was younger, and the trying to figure out the ethics of the types of scenarios Card lays out. I don't More...

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Feb 07, 2011

Jennifer (JC-S) rated it:

‘There is always, always more to learn.’

The Starways Congress is shutting down the net, world by world, and has gathered a fleet to destroy the planet Lusitania. Jane, the evolved computer intelligence, can save the sentient races (humans, buggers and pequeninos ) but only for a while. Once enough of the net is closed down, Jane will not have access to sufficient processing power to move the ships.

In the meantime, Ender is failing and his children must save Jane if they More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 07, 2009

Kevin rated it:

When I finished Card’s excellent book Speaker for the Dead, I was looking forward to reading Children of the Mind more than Xenocide. The reason for this, is that Card introduced in Speaker a monastic order called the Children of the Mind of Christ . They intrigued me, and I assumed that Children of the Mind would be about them. It’s not. What it is about is all the weird, cheap and stupid ideas introduced at the end of the last book. These ideas are not very interesting, they allow for all kind More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 14, 2011

Curtis rated it:

I'm not sure I'd really compare it to the first book or the previous volumes for that matter. There is a lot you can read between the lines by translating xenophobia into the frame of thought people use to generate genocides. Turning the object of hatred into something other than human is an old ploy of political warmaking as well as rationalizations that greater force and killing saves lives in the long run by ending a war. It's questions like that and Hiroshima is addressed directly in this More...

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Aug 29, 2010

Shyan rated it:

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Feb 12, 2009

Ami rated it:

Children of the Mind begins exactly where Xenocide ends. The people of Lucetania are still faced with how to stop the fleet from destroying their home, Ender must figure out how to balance himself and his "children" and everyone is trying to find a way to save Jane from destruction.
I was very torn with how to rate this book. There were many things that bothered me, and many things that touched me. I was bothered by the lack of Ender in this book. In the first three books of the s More...

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Jul 31, 2011

Jaime rated it:

It’s hard to know how to start this review because I’m not quite sure what to say. I have followed these books from Ender’s Game now through the end of the series, emerging not a completely different person, but certainly changed.

Children of the Mind is the conclusion to what got started in Speaker of the Dead. In his acknowledgements, he thanks two people at Tor for allowing him “to split Xenocide in half in order to have a chance to develop and write the second half of the story prop More...

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Nov 25, 2007

Phil rated it:

Great science fiction from the Mormon turned ethicist Orson Scott Card. A worthy conclusion to an impressive endeavor. His sense of humor is sometimes distracting and incongruous, but his character development and exploration of the ethical dimensions of self-defense are unique for the genre. Also, his afterword concluding the "Ender Quartet" is a plangent meditation on the role of strangeness and "Edge"-ness in literature.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 01, 2012

Ricky rated it:

I think that I can say with certainty that this novel is the runner-up to Ender’s Game in the sequence. It was beautiful, and it had, very palpably, love stories, something that the other installments did not explore. I found myself trying to guess who was going to end up with whom, and the result is rather pleasing. The last scene with the marriages was quite beautiful, each pair a reflection in a very real way of who Ender Wiggin was and the power he had, and what he did with the life that More...

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Oct 14, 2010

Ashley rated it:

I really enjoyed this whole 4-book series. The first book (Ender's Game) is the best in terms of story and action, but different in tone from the others. The first is a great stand-alone novel, but the next 3 are very much a continued story. There's so much action and suspense in the first book that the next book can be a real letdown, since the action is much slower and philosophy takes a greater role. That said, the whole series is well worth reading, just don't expect the same level of action More...

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Jan 19, 2012

Meg rated it:

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Dec 16, 2009

Katie rated it:

OSC wrote Children of the Mind and its precursor Xenocide as two halves of what is essentially one long freakin' book. Don't read this if you haven't read Xenocide first. Be warned, it's a loooong haul. The payoff, however, is great.

What is the soul, and what is the self? Where are they? What does it mean to self-exist? And what is our responsibility in that process, both individually and as a community?

0 comments like (1 person liked it)