Xenocide suffers from not being as consistent as the first two books; the first half in particular is very pedestrian, and it sometimes gets bogged down under the weight of its own ideas. Once it gets going, however, it reaches the heights of the first two books - even surpasses them on occasion. If you didn't like "Speaker for the Dead" you probably won't like this one either; in which case I would advise you read Ender's Shadow and leave it at that.

Loving something and recommending something are two completely different things. I loved this book. Whether I recommend it or not depends on a few things.

If you absolutely loved Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, you will probably enjoy Xenocide. If you loved Ender's Game and were so-so with Speaker for the Dead, you may want to hold off on this book and look elsewhere.

The issue is that Xenocide is 99.9% dialogue. Furthermore, the dialogue is about ethics, government, philosophy, metaphysics, physics, and religion. Of course, all of this fits into the story line, and, in fact, it is the story line. I thoroughly enjoyed the book for these very reasons; however, if you like a story with a lot of action, Xenocide probably isn't going to be your cup of tea.

Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead are 2 of the best science fiction books ever written. They both won the Hugo and Nebula in back-to-back years, and were great on several levels, which is amazing, since they are very different books. But not everything is concluded at the end of Speaker, so Card wrote Xenocide and Children of the Mind.

Some parts of Xenocide are amazing: the encounters with the Hive Queen in her lair, the philotic conversations between her and the fathertree Human, some interactions between Ender, Val, Miro and a few pequninoes, the concept of the descolada virus much more fully explored than previously.

But some parts are downright annoying: anthing involving Novinha, Quara, Grego, and Han Qing-Jao. It seems that most of the Lusitanians, who are black Brazilians by ancestry, are horrible. They have huge tempers and egos, and are incredibly unpleasant to be around. Novinha and Quara are the best examples. Everyone who has ever come in contact with Quara would've been much better off if she never existed. That's about as damning a statement possible about someone. Novinha is not much better: she destroyed the lives of all her children and her lover Libo because she thinks if the learned something about the piggies and the descolada, they would die. But she was wrong and her actions got people killed, and created a situation where two of her children were making out often because she wouldn't tell them they were brother and sister.

The people on the chinese world Path are pretty bad too. A small fraction of them were secretly genetically engineered for intelligence, but given OCD symptoms to keep them under control. They are called the Godspoken, and Qing-Jao is one. She is written as another intolerable person that you automatically dislike, and her engineered superintelligence can't even figure out the obvious about herself.

In her culture, reverence and obedience of elders is most important, but when her own father tells her that she was engineered, and isn't really spoken to by the gods, she immediately decides to honor what her father was before he found this out, in effect completely rejecting this supposed prime directive about her elders and ancestors.

It's not a surprise that the Nordic world, where Val and Ender were before coming to Lusitania, has no such horrible characters, and you get the impression that the worlds with white cultures are somehow superior or at least more likeable than the rest. Hmmm.

And of course, Card's religious ideals of every couple wanting to have 6 or 10 children seems to be standard here. I don't know any women who aren't meek, subservient housewives that want to bear more than 4 children, and most want 2. Being pregnant 8 times is a massive sacrifice, but being the husband of such a woman is much different.

In Ender's game, population controls limited people to 2 kids except for extremely rare circumstances, and religion is ancillary. But starting in Speaker and continuing in this book and it's sequel, plus in the 3 post Bugger books of the Shadow series, religion is the dominant presence on earth and most colonies. It's no coincidence that Card is very religious, and sections of Xenocide, Children of the Mind and the last 3 Shadow books are religious speeches or screeds that expound card's personal views at the expense of the story.

And that's to say nothing of the ridiculous gimmick that people discover near the end of Xenocide that allows faster that lightspeed travel merely by wishing. Ug.

This is a terrific book, and my favorite of the first 3 (as far as I've read so far). It seems clear that a lot of the ideas Card is grappling with in this book were actually the main motivation behind the series, because they solve questions fundamental to the first two books.

In particular, over the course of this book, Card poses a pretty interesting philosophical idea involving physics in an explanation for the mind-body problem. Whether you find his approach satisfying or not is likely to determine what you think of the book as a whole. While there's a certain amount of question-begging involved, I personally found it a gripping attempt to take on a very deep problem.

The book also introduces my favorite character of the entire series, who then turns out to be an antagonist. Despite this Card has no problem returning to that character as a sympathetic one at the ending -- something well done, and certainly in the spirit of the speakers of the dead.

There's a point near the end of the books where something so unexpected and seemingly nonsensical happens that it bothered me quite a bit. As I got past the initial shock, it occurred to me that why this has happened is a question that Card has posed as an enormous problem to be solved in forthcoming volumes -- the fact that it makes no sense on the surface is no problem as long as it later makes sense in context. Whether there will be a good enough explanation later on, I have no idea. But with storytelling this strong and ideas this deep, I'm more than happy to stay on board to see where it's going.

I'll start by saying, that in a way, at least through the first 400 pages of the book, I was amazed by it. I felt that Card had trully surpassed the first 2 books of the series. "Ender's Game" was all about the plot, the action, and didn't really get into the characters. "Speaker of The Dead" was a better, but had waaaayy too much useless theological/religuous discussions, even though the story was trully intruiging. On "Xenocide", I felt Card had reached his peak - The characters were deep, interesting and human. The plot was intersting, complicated a true thriller, and while there are many ethical dilemas, it wasn't "heavy" or religion filled like "Speaker"... I won't get into the story itself (you can read about it everywhere) - But what happens after page 400 is a big, big dissapointment. Looks like Card had reached a dead end (too many unpossible to be solved issues) and was looking for an easy way out. First of all, almost 100 pages are devoted to scientific debates, that I am sure make sense to noone (I am not sure even Card had an idea was the f&#* he was talking about), that finally lead to the miricalous solutions to the many problems there are. Suddenly, there is Jane who can fix everything, suddenly Grego, Ella and the rest of them can come up with impossible scientific achievements in a matter of days. The last 100 pages are compelling, you can read them in an hour or so, but still what happens there is just beyond any logic. I realize this is a science fiction novel, but still things need to make sense (the way the previous books did!) instead of the author making us feel like idiots for not understanding what happened! I also felt that the whole Path thing, although interesting, was totally useless and added almost nothing to the story. With all the miracles happening, I didn't feel they needed the Chinese girl to solve one of the questions (it's just absurd - they can solve a TRILLION things, but the questions they asked her they cannot?!?) Another thing that was very dissapointing was Ender's character. While ALL the other characters are deep, interesting and feel like real life personas, and they all have important parts of the story, Ender's character is a mistery: I gotta admit, that Card made him more human than ever (even though he still remained a perfect, peaceful, and impossible rightous person), Ender barely did ANYTHING useful in this book, other that talking with the characters! Roughly speaking, everything that's done on this book, was done by the many other characters, while Ender seemed to just be around and say a few things here and there (nothing trully important actually). You just might forget that he used to be the ultimate leader - briliiant, unbreakable and even ruthless - a genius who killed two people with his bare hands, and destroyed a whole species, all this when he was just a kid! I guess being 60 years old really killed his abilities, didn't it?... He just stands there, old and helpless, his spirit broke because that annoying bi$%& left him (that Novinha character needs to be shot right away!). To sum it all up, Xenocide is still a GREAT read, for any Science fiction fan, it raises many important questions, and deals with a lot of issues, but in many ways it will let you down. This book had huge potential, and the first 400 pages live up to the promise. However, as I already stated, most of the last 200 pages doesn't make sense at all, too many quick, unreal and impossible to understand (not to mention that they come out of nowhere and make no sense whatsoever) solutions that made me, and will make any reader, feel cheated. I don't know the reason for this - Maybe Card found himself stuck, or maybe he got lazy, or maybe he had to reach some publisher's deadline, I don't know. But the bottom line is that when you get to the final 200 pages, you'll feel that in terms of consistency it doesn't really look like the book you started reading... The book turns into a real absurd. Suddenly too many comfortable miracles occur. Suddenly a cripple turn healthy, suddenly Ender creates clones of his dead brother and living sister out of his mind (although I love the idea of having Peter back - it was fun to see him humiliate Ender, just like when they were kids), suddenly there's a cure for everything and for everyone!.. Everything goes just the right way. Come on now, the readers aren't idiots, Mr. Card! Many reviewers critisized the book for it's many ethical dilemas. Well I disagree with them - the questions asked are rellevant and interesting, I had no problem there. I had a problem with all the ABSURD things happening in the last 150 pages. Us fans deserve better.

This is an awesome book. It is chock full of crazy but believable metaphysical theories about everything, and has a great story too.