OT: The Ender Wiggin Series

[HornedFrog Purple]

Well to add to the conglomerate of book series...

Love this one too. In particular Ender's Shadow because it retells the story of Ender's Game (in the immortal words of Obi-Wan Kenobi) from a certain point of view.

My favorite sci-fi series I have read.

[Raiders Army]

Loved Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. Didn't really get into the other books, since they took place a long, long, time ago in a galaxy far, far away...well, at least a long time after the first book.

[HerRealName]

This is eerie. About an hour ago, I thought to myself that I need to look up Orson Scott Card to see if he has released any books lately. I agree - the Ender series is outstanding.

[Eaglesfan27]

I just discovered the Ender series about a year ago and also found it to be one of my favorite series ever (probably 2nd or 3rd actually on my list.)

One series that I haven't heard talked about here at all (maybe I missed it), which is my absolute favorite series of books is the Wheel of Time series. Anyone else here a big fan?

Edited to add: I JUST saw the other thread about the Wheel of Time series :o Well, I did say I might have missed it

[INDalltheway]

I love the Ender series. I was introduced to the series three years ago, and I still read the books. I have read Ender's Game three times, and Ender's Shadow two times. I don't like the others as much, but I have read them also.

[astralhaze]

I still haven't picked up Ender's Shadow for some reason, but have read the entire series three times and the first two more than that.

[sabotai]

I've read Ender's Game, but haven't read any of the others yet (I have a couple of them)

[Barkeep49]

Some ramblings from a huge fan:

I just finished reading "First Meetings" last night. I'm a little bothered by how Card messed with the timeline of Ender's Game in the Shadow series (something he did a tad in one of the stories of First Meetings). I think Speaker for the Dead is good on a whole different level than Ender's Game (one of my favorite books of all time), but Xenocide and Children of the Mind are far too long to do what they did and so I don't recommend that branchline to the kids I work with (I teach and work at the public library). Ender's Shadow approached the excellence of Ender's Game. I thought Shadow of the Hegemon was poor, but Shadow Puppets redeemed the series.

I was surprised, when I recently reread the series, how full of a character Graff is in the books. I think the series deserves to be ranked among the top series of SF (if not period) of all time.

[SackAttack]

Speaker for the Dead is still my favorite of the series, but when I read the first books in high school, it was actually Xenocide that was my second favorite. Go figure.

[JAG]

Just wanted to add my support for the series. I had a completely different experience than Barkeep49 with the Speaker for the Dead series. I found Speaker for the Dead to be a bit disappointing and I wasn't sure about completing the series, but Xenocide I thought was amazing and Children of the Mind was good. The whole Speaker for the Dead series is quite a bit more intellectual and philisophical than Ender's Game, so it may not be everyone's cup of tea (I wouldn't recommend it for kids at all). The Ender's Shadow series is pretty good too, although I think Ender's Shadow is a good bit better than the other two books in the group.

And Ender's Game is the best of them all.

[-Mojo Jojo-]

Ender's Game is one of the all-time classics of sci fi. The rest of the series had their merits but didn't come close to the first. Card is a great author and I'd encourage anyone who liked this series to pick up some of his other stuff. The Worthing Saga is one of my favorites...

[Barkeep49]

Now mind you I finished Xenocide and Children of the Mind my Junior or Senior year in HS so perhaps I wasn't ready to fully appreciate them, but I thought I did get his message, it was just poor storytelling along the way. To me there was no real reason to make it two books and indeed the whole series of events, as I recall, could have been told in about half the space. Perhaps now that I am older (and thus presumably wiser) I should take a second look at them.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Funny, I just finished Shadow of the Hegemon today. It was good, but unlike in Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, I struggled with teenagers having so much power over political and military events on Earth. Still, it was good enough that I think I'll read the next book in the series.

[astralhaze]

My favorite was also Speaker for the Dead. So much to digest in that book and it works on so many different levels. Ender's Game was a better science-fiction book, but Speaker was a better book in my view.

[Chief Rum]

Another Speaker For The Dead fan here, although I love the whole series. I haven't read beyond the original four, though. Would you guys recommend it? It turned me off that the story had reverted to another angle, rather than continuing the story from the end of "Children of the Mind" (ridiculous, of course, given the ending, but, hey you get locked into one group of characters, you know?).

Despite the fact that Speaker For The Dead is now my favorite in the series, Ender's Game will always hold a special place in my memory. That book was one of the pinnacle works I read when I was a kid. My love of science fiction really had an effect on the way my mind developed, I think, and Ender's Game was a big part of that.

Try getting your kid to read the Foundation series, the Rama series, the Ender series, and just about any Heinlein book and see if he comes out as whacky as I did.

Toss in some of Bear's intricate mathematical novels like Eon, and throw in a few good ones from good old Bradbury, and I pretty much went around the block and then some before I was even 12.

CR

[Chief Rum]

dola,

If you're interested in another series by Card, I recommend at least the first book of the Alvin Maker series. Intriguing alternative history of early America, with magic and witchings and stuff tossed in.

I have only read the first book, but I plan on going back to continue that story.

It struck me as funny to see Card doing a fantasy series, but why not?

CR

[astralhaze]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

dola,

If you're interested in another series by Card, I recommend at least the first book of the Alvin Maker series. Intriguing alternative history of early America, with magic and witchings and stuff tossed in.

I have only read the first book, but I plan on going back to continue that story.

It struck me as funny to see Card doing a fantasy series, but why not?

CR

Yes, good stuffs!

With no exception I can think of, you can't go wrong with Card.

[ntndeacon]

I actually liked Wyrms and Songmaster too. But I think Ender's Game is by FAR his best book.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

dola,

If you're interested in another series by Card, I recommend at least the first book of the Alvin Maker series. Intriguing alternative history of early America, with magic and witchings and stuff tossed in.

I have only read the first book, but I plan on going back to continue that story.

It struck me as funny to see Card doing a fantasy series, but why not?

CR

I really liked the first three books in the series, but I struggled through the fourth one. Haven't made it to number five yet.

[Leonidas]

I thought the original Ender books were outstanding. There has been talk for years about doing Ender's Game as a movie, but I don't know where that currently stands. I remember checking Card's webpage a couple years back and he wanted the kid from 6th Sense to play Ender, but producers wanted the kid from the new Star Wars.

As for the newer Bean books, the first one is good, the second OK, and I thought the third was plain crap. Not likely I'll read the fourth.

[hunt_nd]

Ender's Game was a great book.

The sequels got progressively more preachy, more incoherent, and less well written.

Card shows his limitations more and more with each installment. If I saw one more instance of a character's supposed brilliance being demonstrated by his ability to anticipate another character's plan in 'Shadow of the Hegemon', I would have punted the book straight out the window. Seriously, that seemed to be the only card he had to play, showing a severely limited grasp of what intelligence means in a practical sense.

God, that book was just amazingly awful.

[Leonidas]

Originally Posted by hunt_nd

Ender's Game was a great book.

The sequels got progressively more preachy, more incoherent, and less well written.

Card shows his limitations more and more with each installment. If I saw one more instance of a character's supposed brilliance being demonstrated by his ability to anticipate another character's plan in 'Shadow of the Hegemon', I would have punted the book straight out the window. Seriously, that seemed to be the only card he had to play, showing a severely limited grasp of what intelligence means in a practical sense.

God, that book was just amazingly awful.

Spot on. My feelings exactly. I just read Frank Herbert's biography and some more of his books and this is where he shows his brilliance compared to Card. Herbert doesn't shun portrayals of his uber-beings like Card. Rather. Herbert embraces the challenge of depicting the personality of beings more intelligent than any of us can imagine. He likes to speculate (and I think fairly accurately) at the psychology of such individuals. Usually they wind up board and out of touch with their original cause or they cause tremendous violence just to let themselves know they can feel anything.

Meanwhile Card wants to make his mega-intelligentsia strive to be some touchy-feely thing that goes out of its way to prove it's human. He doesn't sell the concept well.

[lordscarlet]

I had no idea they were working on a sequeal to Ender's Game. Orson Scott Card has released Ender in Exile, which comes after Ender's Game, but before Speaker for the Dead.

Amazon.com: Ender in Exile (Ender): Orson Scott Card: Books