This is the third book in the Ender series and although the story of this long science fiction novel reaches its conclusion in the fourth book: Children of the Mind; I won't be reading it. For my taste there was just too much religious mumbo jumbo, cod psychology and cod philosophy weighing down the story line to such an extent that I struggled to get to the End (pun intended)

The story continues more or less where Speaker for the Dead finishes. Andrew Ender Wiggin the Speaker for the dead and his family are nuturing life on the planet Lusitania. There are two alien life forms the Buggers (the Hive Queen) and the Piggies (pequininos), that are under threat from the earth's government now called Congress. The planet Lusitania is infected with a virus: the descolada which is essential for the pequninos to continue their life cycle, but destroys everything else. The Hive Queen is creating her own colony of insect like workers to make intergalactic space ships to escape the planet. Congress have sent a task force to Lusitania with a bomb to destroy the planet to stop the spread of the descolada. Meanwhile on another planet the inhabitants of Chinese origin follow the Path which is made up of an elite strata of people who are god spoken, whose super intelligence is helped by an ability to speak to the gods. A super computer programme (Jane) that has an autonomous existence is helping Ender and his family of scientists by stopping the arrival of the task force. The elite group on the Path are trying to discover how the task force has been prevented from reaching Lusitania.

Most of the world building on Lusitania had already been achieved in the previous novel: Speaker for the Dead and so the new addition to the story line focuses to some extent on the people of the Path. The link between the two planets however is fairly tenuous and only serves to show an alternative society to the frantic work and seemingly endless discussions amongst the scientists and religious community on Lusitania. One could call the discussions family squabbles, because Orson Scott Card has an uncanny knack of reducing life changing theories and positions down to a fairly low common denominator, which is Ender's extended family. I got tired of reading about them way before the somewhat disappointing resolution of some of the physical and scientific issues. This book just didn't work for me and so 3 stars. ( )

A good sequel to "Speaker for the Dead", continuing where that book left off. ( )

orrendo! davvero
tutta la parte sul pianeta Path mi ha fatto star male di stomaco
tutto il resto l'ho odiato ( )

It is amazing how in a book this long so little actually happened.
Nonsensical pseudo-intellectual masturbation; all the appearance of profound thoughts without any profundity to be seen, for hundreds of pages.

Is this really the same author as Speaker for the Dead, a book that actually had something to say while simultaneously actually telling a story?

Card in the years since I read this revealed himself as a horrible human being, too. Don't waste your time or mental energy. ( )

As good as the 1st time. ( )