"Ender's Shadow"/Bean's side of the story - worth a read?

[MrsBugi]

My husband and I have both read "Ender's Game" and "Speaker of the Dead," both of which we enjoyed tremendously.

I am currently reading "Xenocide," and am wondering whether or not Bean's side of the story (the "Ender's Shadow" parallel series) is worth reading?

 

[sswingle]

Absolutely. They are as good as the others.

 

[illusion88]

It's really good. I really enjoyed Beans side of Enders Game, and his story of "growing up" is awesome. After that his story takes place directly after Enders Game, and cronicles the stories of the other children as well. Defiently worth the read. BTW, stop reading Enders series at the end of Xenocide. Children of the Mind is crap.

 

[Queasy]

Worth the read. Gives you an extra dimension on all that went on during Ender's Game.

 

[zebano]

I havn't read "Children of the Mind" but while all the other books are a step below Ender's Game, they are worth reading. Read it, and enjoy it!

 

[Bryophyte]

I liked all of the books in the series. Some were more fun than others to read, but they were all worthwhile.

 

[MrsBugi]

Wow, high praise from ScottSwingleComputers and stamps of approval from illusion88 and Queasy. I guess we'll be adding a few more books to our library, thanks for the feedback. :thumbsup:

Originally posted by: illusion88
It's really good. I really enjoyed Beans side of Enders Game, and his story of "growing up" is awesome. After that his story takes place directly after Enders Game, and cronicles the stories of the other children as well. Defiently worth the read. BTW, stop reading Enders series at the end of Xenocide. Children of the Mind is crap.

Thank you for the tip, I've heard similar murmers from others that Children of the Mind gets preachy and silly. It's a shame, since the rest of the series has been fantastic so far.

 

[MrsBugi]

Originally posted by: zebano
I havn't read "Children of the Mind" but while all the other books are a step below Ender's Game, they are worth reading. Read it, and enjoy it!

Thanks, we will!

 

[Gunslinger08]

The entire series is great. I've met OSC a few times and he's also a great guy. Definitely support him by buying the books instead of getting them from the local library.

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: MrsBugi
Wow, high praise from ScottSwingleComputers and stamps of approval from illusion88 and Queasy. I guess we'll be adding a few more books to our library, thanks for the feedback. :thumbsup:

Originally posted by: illusion88
It's really good. I really enjoyed Beans side of Enders Game, and his story of "growing up" is awesome. After that his story takes place directly after Enders Game, and cronicles the stories of the other children as well. Defiently worth the read. BTW, stop reading Enders series at the end of Xenocide. Children of the Mind is crap.

Thank you for the tip, I've heard similar murmers from others that Children of the Mind gets preachy and silly. It's a shame, since the rest of the series has been fantastic so far.

I powered my way through Children of the Mind. IT WAS REALLY TOUGH. It isn't as bad as Tolkien's Silmarillion but it is pretty bad.

 

[Hyperlite]

great series! OSC also as a new book coming out soon, Empire

 

[DanTMWTMP]

read all of it!!!! he's going to release another book to bind the two series together

Shadoes in Flight. You'll understand the meaning of that title when you read the ending of the Bean saga. I thought the ending of the Bean saga was like the ultimate awesome closure between the two series. The conversation that took place between Peter and Ender at the end of Ender's game was really good.

I went to OSC's book signing at comic con 2005. He's really cool guy, and very easy to talk to. He's really into games too. I talked to him about his role in Monkey Island and his Insult Sword Fighting.


I thought Children of the Mind was decent. It wasn't bad, and I enjoyed it. the 2nd or 3rd book of the Bean series was a bit slow, and the low point of the series. Children of the Mind was more trippy, philosophical, and more to the tune of Dans Simmons, except w/ deeper and better characters. The final Bean book was ultimate good. Of course though, Ender's Shadow and Ender's game can battle for top spot on which one is the best. But overall, all the characters are memorable, and I felt really sad to part with them at the end of Children of the Mind, then again @ Shadow of the Giant (I read each of the Bean books as they were released on day 1. ahhh, i remember running to the bookstore after school to nab each book).

You should read his other work like Pastwatch, and Enchantment. I love his sarcastic characters lol. I love how he binds love stories together. They somehow work, and seem realistic. I think he's underrated in terms of telling a love story, which are littered all across his novels. I love how he doesn't care about using any ethnic background when making his strong, deep, characters. After reading his novels, I have a new pespective on human beauty, and now I can see it across all colors of skin. Yes, that's shallow, but I bet not a lot of people are willing to admit that they only have a preferred race or races when looking @ pr0n/women.

 

[Aves]

I just finished Speaker for the Dead yesterday and I've only recently read Ender's Game for the first time. So far, so good!

I should start on Xenocide tonight but I have another book, Jennifer Government, that I want to read also so it may be that instead.

 

[dabuddha]

Yes! The 2nd series is done quite well.

 

[step-dawg]

Yes! very good book!

 

[Gunslinger08]

Originally posted by: DanTMWTMP
You should read his other work like Pastwatch, and Enchantment. I love his sarcastic characters lol. I love how he binds love stories together. They somehow work, and seem realistic. I think he's underrated in terms of telling a love story, which are littered all across his novels. I love how he doesn't care about using any ethnic background when making his strong, deep, characters. After reading his novels, I have a new pespective on human beauty, and now I can see it across all colors of skin. Yes, that's shallow, but I bet not a lot of people are willing to admit that they only have a preferred race or races when looking @ pr0n/women.

I agree on reading his other work. Pastwatch, Treason, and The Worthing Saga are all very good stand-alone novels. The Alvin Maker series is great and I can't wait for the release of the final book. Magic Street was also a very entertaining read.

 

[nageov3t]

I felt like OSC was really cramming his religious beliefs down my throat in his later books like the Ender's Shadow series.

 

[yllus]

I thought that the Bean side of the story wasn't anywhere near the quality of Ender's. Nor did I really appreciate the revisioning of the story to make Bean out to be the superior intellect, but hey, it's Card's universe to meld.

 

[neutralizer]

I liked the Bean side of the story much better than the Ender's side. I read Ender's Game and enjoyed and naturally progressed to Speaker of the Dead. I barely made through it with the ridiculous piggies and etc. I tried reading a page of Xenocide and I gave up. I did read the rest of the stories following Ender's Shadow which were a lot easier to read and less boring, but that could just be me.

 

[DanTMWTMP]

I have a hunch.. maybe, just maybe Dan Simmons had a role in his odd departure to philosophy/extreme sci fi. The latter books came out during the time of when Simmon's Hyperion became popular and won the sci-fi awards. Simmon's novels lack character depth, and not much of a story line.

it does, however, introduce/reinforce radical concepts such as the datasphere (suped up internet basically), radical AI's, farcasters, mysterious time waves, philosophy atune to Ghost in the Shell, etc etc... You can see influences in today's sci fi from Hyperion.

Maybe the sci-fi circles of that time revolved around generating new sci-fi concepts that has deep roots in philosophy and what not. I'm assuming that is why Card wanted to create a novel that involved character depth across all species (human/alien) and races (latinos, asian, european in the Ender's series) and meld it with Hyperion-isk concepts (auia, philotes, philotic web, and that whole virus species thing derived from some sort of force that gives intelligence to select living beings, which in essence, connects all intelligent species together across the universe...etc etc.. and that's where the ansibles are from... etc etc)

well, I thought it was interesting, but ya, it's a bit off of his usual writing style (light on sci-fi/fantasy utility, but based in a sci-fi/fantasy setting, and heavy/deep emphasis on character development)