The Good Book Without Focus

In spite of my earlier assertions, curiosity overpowered my need for emotional recovery, so I finished reading Ender in Exile today. It was good, and that's about all that needs to be said.

Except that it's not all that needs to be said. That book was all over the place. It really should have been several books, or never written. Or a series of short stories. Or something. I don't know. I'm not the professional writer, and I'm glad Card wrote it. I did like it, a lot.

How can you call it a novel, though, when there were so many plot lines—all of which were a little bit weak—that were only weakly strung together?

It's true he needed to actually go into the part where Ender finds the Hive Queen cocoon. And he fabricated a new conflict with the Admiral of the ship that took him to Shakespeare. That was good, but it was too easy. And then there was that whole thing with Ender's letter to his mom and dad. I get it, and it was a beautiful letter, and it's the kind of thing I would have wanted to include in a book series if I could write one like this. But it's not the sort of thing you can just toss into a book and leave hanging like that.

The most disappointing part was the end, where the story was so truncated. Randall/Achilles/Arkanian and his vilifying of the Hegemon and Virlomi, and his creation of the label 'Xenocide' needed more time to develop. It's pretty obvious Card was leaving a thread there for a possible future book—the story of how Arkanian Delphiki tries to make up for all the lies he propagated and all the unrest and hatred and division he caused, all because he believed the insane ravings of the woman who raised him. In a way, it parallels the burdens Ender has on his shoulders.

It also ties in to the little subplot of Dorabella and Alessandra—how much are children affected by having crazy parents? So I guess it does loosely fit in with Ender's story, because he was so conflicted about his own mother and father.

I don't mean to be overly critical of the book, but it was somewhat disappointing, only because it's not as strong as the others. Now I wonder when the next one will be finished and published. I can't wait.