Ender: too much of a good thing?

[bruno_f]

Ender's Game seemed like a "stand alone" to me. Similar to the Matrix, it was so well done that I could enjoy it over and over again. .

I read Ender's Game first and then read Ender's Shadow. Ender's Game gets my vote for being one of the best books i've ever read but Ender's Shadow seems forced, over analyzes everything and I have the impression the author is talking to me, explaining things instead of letting the plot take it's course.

I'm afraid Ender's Game was OSC best book and he hasn't been able to reach that same lever of storytelling again.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I am asking myself if it is worth it to comment on a seven year old post, but I figured "Eh, why not?"

I haven't read all five pages of this thread but I wanted to point out one thing I find important:

My predicament is a certain cynicism - the story is told, the end. Therefore why erad the others?

I just wanted to clarify because, and I can't remember my source, but I remember reading about how the only reason Ender's Game was written in the first place was to set up Card's Speaker for the Dead trilogy.

Again, this was a long time ago I read the article, but here is the information how I remember it: Ender's Game was originally written as a short story, by a different name if I am not mistaken. From that, Orson Scott Card came up with the idea for Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind.

In order to properly set up this trilogy, he re-wrote Ender's Game, and ended up creating a Masterpiece. If you ask me, Ender's Game is one of the greatest pieces of Sci-Fi ever written, and that is saying a lot.

To support the rest of year theory, I did get the feeling that the whole bean quartet was sort of Card trying to cash in on the Ender series, but I did enjoy all of these novels as a whole and will probably reread them at some point in the future.

 

[Richard B]

I really liked Speaker for the Dead, it is one of my favourite books. I only twigged it was a sequel to a short story I had read later. I read the novel Enders Game subsequently and felt it was a bit too stretched.

I felt the original short story was better. I think it might have been in a book called Tomorrows Children?

 

[Rodders]

Not a popular comment, but I much preferred the Shadow series of books to the Enders sequals.

 

[The Spurring Platty]

Picked up Ender's Game, but am too afraid to get anything else without having to research the order!

 

[Kevin11]

Ender's Game was awesome. I read the next two books in the series, and then moved on. As a reader, when somethig great like that comes into your hands you know the sequels aren't going to be able to reach the same level, and they didn't. I'm not saying they weren't good, but I wasn't so invested in the characters that I cared what happened to them next.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Picked up Ender's Game, but am too afraid to get anything else without having to research the order!

Speaker For the Dead is the sequel. Xenocide (which I haven't read) supposedly comes after that. Ender's Shadow parallel's Ender's Game...it tells the story of Bean, who was a minor character in Ender's Game. There's also a series of sequals for Ender's Shadow, including Shadow of The Hegemon.

My opinions: I enjoyed Ender's Game. I found Speaker For The Dead less entertaining. I enjoyed Ender's Shadow even more than Ender's Game.