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 by a lot of ideas. They're usually very interesting ideas, but that doesn't excuse their interference with the story.

It's not only ideas that bloat the two books, though. For example, I don't think Wang-Mu and Qing-Jao are both needed. It's quite interesting to see their personalities clash, but it's not necessary. One character could have served the functions of both.

I also feel that much of the plot of Children Of The Mind was not needed. A lot of it follows the path of "Oh no, this terrible thing is going to happen!" "Wait, maybe if this extremely unlikely event takes place, the terrible thing won't happen!" "Hooray, the event took place!" I didn't see a lot of value in that.

The characters were written weakly as well. Perhaps this is my own lack of comprehension, but their dialogue sounded like the same person most of the time (except for the queen and the tree, who sounded like each other). Furthermore, they were virtually flawless, which makes it hard to care about them. Sure, there was a lot made of their flaws, but these flaws all seemed superficial, and pretty much everyone was a super great person doing the best they could. The only truly flawed ones that I saw were the minor characters Quara, Plikt, and Lands.

There were still a few great moments. I particularly enjoyed (in a bad way) Miro's last scene with Young Val. The confrontation between Peter and Lands was also very enjoyable.