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Children of the Mind (Ender, Book 4) By Orson Scott Card ( Tor Science Fiction )
Release Date: 1997-06-15
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Product Description
The planet Lusitania is home to three sentient species: the Pequeninos; a large colony of humans; and the Hive Queen, brought there by Ender. But once against the human race has grown fearful; the Starways Congress has gathered a fleet to destroy Lusitania.
Jane, the evolved computer intelligence, can save the three sentient races of Lusitania. She has learned how to move ships outside the universe, and then instantly back to a different world, abolishing the light-speed limit. But it takes all the processing power available to her, and the Starways Congress is shutting down the Net, world by world.
Soon Jane will not be able to move the ships. Ender's children must save her if they are to save themselves.
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Amazon.com Review
Children of the Mind, fourth in the Ender series, is the conclusion of the story begun in the third book, Xenocide. The author unravels Ender's life and reweaves the threads into unexpected new patterns, including an apparent reincarnation of his threatening older brother, Peter, not to mention another "sister" Valentine. Multiple storylines entwine, as the threat of the Lusitania-bound fleet looms ever nearer. The self-aware computer, Jane, who has always been more than she seemed, faces death at human hands even as she approaches godhood. At the same time, the characters hurry to investigate the origins of the descolada virus before they lose their ability to travel instantaneously between the stars. There is plenty of action and romance to season the text's analyses of Japanese culture and the flux and ebb of civilizations. But does the author really mean to imply that Ender's wife literally bores him to death? --Brooks Peck
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 Tying up loose ends ( knute87 )
In Children of the Mind, Orson Scott Card wraps up the Ender's Gamer series. That's what this book is basically for. Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead can stand on their own but Xenocide (the third book) and Children are for those who enjoyed the first two books and want to see the story to the end. Not to be too harsh on the very readable book but little is new. The ending is satisfying but no more. I would recommend the book to those who love Card and want the complete Ender's Game story.
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I Hated This Book So Much I Couldn't Give It 1 Star ( thefamilypetty )
About halfway through "Children of the Mind" I realized that I hated it. With a passion. Anything that evokes so much passion can't be worthless. That's why I'm giving it 3 stars. If you loved the first three books as much as I did, you may similarly feel a strong emotion when you read this one. It's not exactly boring. I just felt like I was in another universe trying to understand what in the world Card was doing.
Why do I hate it so much? Because the characters are all varying degrees of unsympathetic, and all of the major action surrounds Card's weird new mysticism, rather than the intense ethical dilemmas of the previous books. This book is like the opposite of the other books and I couldn't understand why. No one is rational, no one is wise, no one has any empathy at all. The spirit of Ender Wiggin doesn't exist in this book.
No, Ender isn't really present in this book. Card would like you to believe that he is, in the form of Peter and Valentine, Ender's "children of the mind", but I found those characters frustrating and unbelievable and not at all like any side of Ender. Interestingly, they could be viable characters on their own, but Card insists on treating them as if they are not real people and we should not care what happens to them (especially Young Valentine who is subjected to extreme emotional torture but we're not supposed to care about her feelings, she's just an "empty vessel").
No strong characters rise up to replace the absence of Ender. Card tries, with Miro (who becomes loathsome in my opinion)and Peter (all the fun sociopathy drained out of him). With the exception of Wang-Mu, all of the female characters come off looking really bad. You'll wonder why Ender married Novinha, as awful, self-centered and destructive as she is. You'll wonder why you didn't realize (Old) Valentine was such a self-righteous prig before. You'll wonder when Jane became so extraordinarily selfish and annoying.
Far too much time is spent on the planet Pacifica, a planet apparently inhabited by self-righteous and rude religious nuts. The chief one being a holy man who doesn't "believe in ceremony" yet insists any roof he eats under be burned because he is oh so holy. And did I tell you that we are supposed to love these Pacifican nuts? That they are supposedly so wise and above everyone else that main characters are reduced to tears and supplication?
If you want to know how the situation with the Lusitanian fleet is resolved and what happens to Ender and the gang, then go ahead and read this book. I thought everything that happened was backwards and wrong but hey, that's just me.
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 Things kind of got crazy... ( gabriel_landowski )
...and the thread of the story seems to just run further away from the original concepts. Wasn't thrilled with the new ideas expressed in it and wouldn't recommend it as a good read.
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A Not So Fitting End... ( cedmt )
Before reading this, I already knew what to expect having already ingested the previous three books in this series - Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide, so I'm not sure what exactly about this book was a disappointment. Card finally gives us a kind of end to Ender's 3000 year life and many plot points that arguably should have already taken place in Xenocide. Unlike the ending to the Harry Potter series, we are not left feeling a sense of sadness and loss at losing a character we have already followed for a thousand pages. Instead, we get another failed attempt at a philosophical science fiction novel. The dialogue is almost endless, one of my major criticisms of the last two books, but here, the religious and spiritual debates reach a crescendo, for me, it was almost too much and almost forced me to stop reading the book. But alas, having loved Ender's story, maybe only in the beginning to be honest with you, I had to see how everything played out.
I cannot decide whether Card's note at the end of the book, where he tries explain what it is he was and is trying to do and where he discusses the work of Oe and Endo (both authors I adore), was a good idea or a bad one. For those having read the previous two volumes and presumably this one since you see the note at the end, you already figured that he had an intense interest both in Asian culture and writing and in creating some kind of moral pedagogy in his work. Unfortunately, his finished project does not stand up as well to other writers who have successfully done it--Endo, Oe, C.S. Lewis to name a few--because the philosophy and religion and other spiritual aspects of the novel are so in-your-face and all-consuming that the plot and the storylines disappear.
Anyways, at least I can say that I'm done with this book series...
Interesting Quotes:
"Life is a suicide mission."
"Do the dead tips of fingernails feel bad when you pare them away?"
"It's all fictions anyway. We do what we do and then we make up reasons for it afterward, but they're never the true reasons, the truth is always just out of reach."
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 Only book that has made me cry
This is the only book that has made me cry. I cried when Ender died, (although he didn't die his aiua passed on to Peter) the character of Ender died. Through the series I have gotten so attatched to his character unlike any other character in any series. Through his guilt of xenocide, and hard life it was hard to read sometimess. Especially, when he had problems with Novinha in Xenocide, losing her for the time being but gaining her back in COTM. His funeral was very touching, and probably the best part in the book. The whole book was good, and had a satisfying ending. The philotes were a bit confusing, but oh well. Ender's Game is being made into a movie, and I doubt it's going to be very good, but they can make it good if they go into the emotions of the characters, not just the battles. The thing that I liked best about the series was the characterization, especially the character of Ender. After a life full of guilt he can live a new life. Farewell, Ender Wiggin "the candle burned out long before the legend ever did."
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