Series: Book 9 in the Ender series
Rating: **
Tags: EN-SciFi, Lang:en
Summary
Set between Card's Hugo and Nebula–winning
Ender's Game (1985) and
Speaker for the Dead (1986), this philosophical
novel covers familiar events, but puts new emphasis on their
ethical ramifications. In the wake of his victory over the
alien Formics, 12-year-old military genius Ender Wiggins is
hailed as a hero, but governments opposed to the
International Fleet, which trained him, intend to portray him
as a monster. Ender winds up as titular governor of one of
the new human colonies, where he struggles to adapt to
civilian life and ponders his role in the deaths of thousands
of humans and an entire alien species. His agonized musings
aren't always sophisticated but possess a certain gravitas.
Fans will find this offering illuminating, and it's also
accessible to thoughtful readers new to the series.
(Nov.)
Adult/High School—Here is Card's answer to all those
readers who asked, "What happened to Ender?" between
Ender's Game (1985) and
Speaker for the Dead (1986, both Tor), a gap that
covers nearly 3000 years. Twelve-year-old Ender Wiggin should
be coming home to a hero's welcome after wiping out the
dreaded buggers—aliens who have twice defeated humanity
in the past—in a fierce space battle. He is instead
proclaimed a dangerous weapon and appointed titular governor
of a colony world to keep him as far away from Earth as
possible. His beloved sister Valentine joins him on the
colony ship but is unable to penetrate the barriers he has
erected around himself. Wracked with remorse at his genocide
of the buggers, Ender searches for the reason the aliens
allowed him to defeat them, knowing the answer will give him
direction. As in most great speculative fiction, Card mines
the depths of humanity's philosophical and political ideas
through Ender's trials and discoveries.
Exile brings together many drifting story lines from
a number of other books in the series, so it's not for the
uninitiated. For those who are familiar with Ender and his
world, this is a wonderful treat to be devoured whole in a
gulp and then returned to later to digest at
leisure.—_Charli Osborne, Oxford Public Library, MI_
From Publishers Weekly
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Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division
of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.