I just wish I had the insight that these characters have.
To be able to say and do the right things at the right time to ease others' pain would be a wonderful character trait.

Instead, I tend to have empathy, which puts you in the other person's shoes, but doesn't help you at all in knowing what to say. When you're hurting like the other person, you can't think clearly enough to be of any use to them.

Ender as the Speaker is almost omniscient. He could do no wrong. It's only in later books that you see his weaknesses.

xD Everyone wishes they could have that sort of insight. In the end, all the right words were said, but part of what I like especially in Speaker is that there is still a sort of struggle to get to that point. You have to figure that, yes eventually they will all be won over by him... but there is a definite series of "oh this is not working so well" moments that make it all more real.

I'm with you on the empathy thing though. Everytime anyone comes to me with "oh such and such is upsetting me" all I can do is flail vaguely and generally not help. xD I'm too busy feeling with them to know what to say to help the situation.

As for Ender the Speaker doing no wrong... I think I would argue that maybe to others it seems like he thinks he can do no wrong. (God how convoluted it that?!), but the truth of the matter is that Ender himself thinks otherwise. So much of what he does is almost an attempt to absolve himself of his actions in Battle School. It's why he carries the hive queen with him and spends so much time working with the piggies to try and avoid what he knows could happen. I tend to think that makes all the difference in making him a character with very real flaws, even if no one but him and the reader can see it. I guess in a way you could see that as him being selfish.. doing all these things to try and clear his own mind rather than merely because he wants to. (Not that I agree with that. For every trait of his that is like Peter, he has part of Valentine's personality as well.)

..I was going somewhere with this and then I sneezed and lost my train of thought. lol. As you can see.. I think about this a lot.

Fiarra, you've disappeared! Where's your avatar?

The interesting thing about later books, particularly Shadow of the Hegemon and Shadow Puppets, is how Card worked with Peter's personality. Instead of being just the "evil brother", his character becomes much more complex.

His parents actually picked up personalities too, rather than being just the empty shell "parents of the brilliant children" characters.

*makes spooky noises and floats around* I've been assimilated. @[email protected];;

I saw the beginnings of all the characterization at the farthest point I got in the Shadow series. Peter was always interesting as a character to me because in the earlier books he embodied a lot of traits that I considered undesireable, but he was still believeable. You see some of that in the Ender books through their own limited interaction that was mentioned during the writing of the book on his life. A sense that at least there was something good, or at least with a purpose, lurking behind it all.

I read a rant somewhere about Card's portrayal of adults in.. most of his writing.. somewhere. But I can't remember any specifics. x_x;; Darn my memory! At least at first though, the parents didn't need to be much more than caricatures of people. In a story told from Ender's view-point, they simply didn't need to exist as more than that due to the lack of presence in his life. This is entirely different from their interactions with Valentine and Peter, and the way that despite appearing exceedingly stupid and unaware to the kids, they actually did a good job of keeping tabs on them.

Ah....april fool's!

Ender's Game is by far one of my favorite series. The First book itself is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the philosophy of acting humane against things man doesn't entirely understand, and it's protocol; Which is best elaborated in the book "Xenocide," when Ender is faced with three different types of aliens. One is the virus which we can neither comunicate or compromise with. The second, The kind of alien we can understand and compromise with...the pequeninos, and lastly the Hive queen, whom is somewhere in the middle...it can come to terms with us but does not have a formal communication we can partake in.
Ender's Game also takes another route that is more political which i also love... the process of a world empire being built and how tedeious but beneficial it can be is very interesting. The books involved with that I can't remember...but I do know Bean was in all of those novels and he's my favorite character haha

Is there another book after Shadow Puppet?
That one left some things pretty much up in the air.

Generally, I don't much care for the really political stuff in my science fiction books. Card does that quite a bit. He's really big on the socio-philosophical-political stuff.

But you're right...Bean is an excellent character. I actually like him better than Ender.
But it's the young Bean that I'm particularly drawn to.

Jeannesha: Shadow of the Giant comes after Shadow Puppets and there is apparently another one planned after it. So.. no wonder it seemed unfinished. xD

I recently re-read Xenocide because the last time I'd read it was in like 8th grade and I don't think I was really expecting what I ended up reading so it didn't get much of a chance to process. I need to buy Children of the Mind if I want to re-read... but I feel like once I got past Xenocide, I didn't have nearly as much interest in the characters. Which makes me feel kinda bad I guess..

And I looove young Bean. You can't help it when you read about him!

Gaa....I have *got* to get back online with the Science Fiction Book Club.
I haven't bought any new books in over a year, so it's time to make a huge purchase. (I'm sure I'm behind in my Wheel of Time series also...).

Did Card write "Three to Dorsai"?

My google search is telling me that Gordon R Dickson wrote those. I've only read his Dragon Knight series as that was all the local library had by him.

Oh Wheel of Time... I want to finish it. And I had read like 7 of them.. but it's been so long that I would need to re-read to keep track of what's going on again.. and part of me tries to die when I think about how many pages that is!

Duh...google...man, I'm lazy. `smacks self on head` I coulda looked myself.
Sorry.

I've read the first few books in the Wheel of Time over and over so many times. Every time Jordan brought another out, I knew I had to catch back up on what was going on. I know that now I'll have to do it again.
Some of it is rather hard reading.

Back to Card - I think that his approach to his characterizations has really changed over the years. Even though I liked the earlier books, I think that his newer ones are much more "realistic"?

But boy, Speaker of the Dead with the piggies... you can't beat that. The only other author I've read that did such a good job of showing how you can't read human ideas/ideals into alien beings is CJ Cherryh in her Foreigner series.
The idea is that alien civilizations aren't just different - they're "hardwired" different. Their instincts can't even be compared to ours.

xD it's ok. I live with like a million tabs open on my firefox so it's the work of seconds to run the google search.

I think the issue I have with reading WoT is that there are just so many characters and I dont know if I have the patience to keep up with all those side-stories.

I definitely agree that his characterizations have changed quite a bit over time. I read the.. Homecoming saga a really long time ago (actually.. maybe even before the Ender series) and I vaguely remember being dissatisfied with the characters. *adds those to list of things to re-read*

Although I will say that while reading Ender In Exile I noted the change in his writing and the way he developed characters in it. Good times.

And yes, part of what does make the piggies so believeable is that it's not just human society in a different form. Not only does it help bring the message home that the characters are dealing with something totally foreign, but it also builds them up as their own separate entity that needs to be faced.

Not only as foreign separate entities that are totally different from us...but the fact that he made us connect with them and *like/love* them. He also made their foreignness seem right.

Hmm...maybe I'm not saying that right...

He made me able to understand their alien/foreign ways in a way that made sense. Their mores are so different from ours... their actions have different consequences. i.e...killing/planting somebody is the highest honor you can give them. (if you've had anthropology maybe what I'm trying to say would make more sense)

Noo I totally get what you're trying to say. xD I suck at explaining apparently!

He presented them in such a way that it was different but also theirs entirely. And as such, it was right. And then throughout the book you see how all those things combine into something that you end up genuiney caring about and liking.

That being said.. I love the "science" in Speaker. The whole idea that each organism on Lusitania is linked with another and without each other, they can't continue to grow and evolve. Even on my first read I remember being fascinated by the concept.

Yes. How come here on earth we're so diverse?
Or are we really linked together like that, but we just can't see it?

The very idea of that actually working somehow is... so strange to me. xD I majored in ecology and evolution in college, so that sort of thing has always been totally fascinating to me

You know, for the types of diversity we have here on earth.... the many forms that life takes, whether it be flora or fauna... I have a hard time believing that *some* form of life isn't somewhere out there.

It's got to be. How can life be so prevalent here, but not elsewhere. After all, we're made from cosmic "stuff", as Carl Sagan used to say.

I'm fully convinced that somewhere out there exists other life. With the way the Earth developed and the diversity we have that's evolved from that cosmic "stuff", it seems likely that it could have happened elsewhere. Especially given the extent of the universe. o_o;;

I guess we won't know unless we managed to get technology up to snuff... or until the hive queens find us. xD

Oh, I like what I've read of his. I've yet to finish the Ender series, but I'm planning to at first chance. I own Enchantment and Ender's Shadow, and I've read Ender's Shadow and Game. I loved all three! I'm pretty sure I've read a third of the Ender's series when I first got into it a few years ago, but I don't remember it exactly, besides a few specific scenes and plot points.
Anyway, I love what I've read so far, and I can't wait to get a hold of some more, such as the Speaker of the Dead stuff.

Okay, I went to the library a while back and finally read Xenocide so now I've read every Ender book, and I just finished Ender's shadow and I think I'm gonna stop there because Bean is great and all, but Ender is just too bamf to diverge from. So I amd now egerly awaiting the last Ender book that will tie up the looks descolada ends.

I've always wondered about that planet that the descolada came from. It's never really been addressed, has it? Last I knew, Peter and whats-her-name were around the planet then returned when Jane came back.

...or did I miss something?

they left at the end of CTM but Card said in the afterword thing that he would have to write about what happens with the decoladras

BAMF is a great acronym. And definitely applies in this case!! :) I like you.

Gosh it's been so long since I read Children of the Mind that I'd totally forgotten about that whole thing. Clearly I need to go to the bookstore and re-read, especially if there is going to be a continuation that explores the virus more. I actually just went to poke wikipedia about it to refresh my memory and I feel so silly for not remembering because the very concept of communicating using the virus is just TOO AWESOME.

*sigh* That's what I get for reading these things when I was barely 13...

Why thank you. I like you too ^__^

My only thing with the decoladoras is that I think that they could be the virus. They could have colonized Lusitania and we don't even realize it.

I suspect that may be true, Pennie. I was thinking along those lines myself when I read the book, except some of the things they talked about with the probes and aircraft at the planet itself didn't seem to lend itself to the virus as alien entity theory. Seems like their aircraft would be *really, really* small.