Ho everyone,
I was hoping to get further into the series before making this thread, but our timing has dictated the moment has come. Although I've been a member of this board for some time (maybe 8 years?) I had to date never actually read any OSC books. I just liked the discussion forum, I guess. Actually I had read Ender's Game a long time ago...and didn't like it. For some reason the film adaptation got me interested to try the book again, and to my surprise I loved the book this time. I've gone on to finish the Lusitania trilogy, the Shadow trilogy (along with Ender's Shadow), and I'm just about the begin the War of Gifts (which I assume will be reminiscent of the Star Wars Christmas Special) followed by Ender in Exile. My wife reads faster and just finished the First Formic War books as well, which are next for me.
I wanted to hear your thoughts about this series, and especially in regard to certain trends I see come up in them. One thing I'll say right off the bat is I feel like Card's priorities change as the series goes on, so that there are certain...inconsistencies that creep up. But more on that in a moment.
Ender's Game
Loved the book! Pacing is tight, plot is easy to follow but engaging, and the character of Ender a bit of a cypher precisely in the way he is to everyone else - even to himself. He seems aware of what he is capable of, but not that aware of what it means in terms of his moral character. As he's very young, he has a big problem with his particular set of traits without seeing the redeeming side of it (which we see more in the Lusitania trilogy). The twist ending, even if you know it's coming, works very well. The only sad part of the book is that some of Ender's early relationships, such as with Alai and Shen, fall away not to far into the book, and are revisited only near the end with brief interactions that imply all the caring is still there. But given just how much sympatico Ender had with perhaps Alai in particular (at first it seemed they almost might be peers, both thinking quickly and creatively) it seemed a bit of a shame that Alai ended up being just another jeesh member. There is one brief mention to Mazer that of all of them Alai might be a suitable replacement for Ender, a point which I'll bring back soon. The thesis of the book - that loving your enemy allows you to destroy them - is probably dubious on a technical war level, but on a moral level the point is well taken: you can hurt best those you love, because you know them deeply.
Lusitania trilogy
I actually loved this trilogy, and although it's very different in tone from Ender's Game (shockingly so), it goes much deeper on the human level than EG did. One thing to note is that this trilogy appears to be more or less consistent with the epilogue of EG, maybe with the odd soft retcon here and there. Despite OSC's apparent intention for the EG epilogue to be scrapped from canon, I like it and refuse to give it up. Also worthy of note is the appearance of Peter here, and although strictly speaking it's not the 'real' Peter the book does give him full due credit as being a scary person to have come back into the world. This is very much a family story, but does broach metaphysical issues, especially pertaining to Jane and generally to the theory (is this Card's real belief?) that souls are distinct entities that come to inhabit living beings (organic or otherwise), and that the strongest of these souls is needed to inhabit the strongest beings. That there's a disparity in 'spirit' among people is something established by St Paul in one of his letters (forget which one), so there's a Christian precedent for that idea. But whereas EG and this trilogy do work very well as general Christian stories (just like C.S. Lewis' do), this metaphysics about souls is definitely inconsistent with the teachings of most Christian groups. Maybe someone who knows about Mormonism can tell me whether Card's ideas here are extrapolations of the Mormon teachings? I know the Catholic teachings best, and these ideas are definitely not compatible with that.
Ender's Shadow
I'll treat this book as a standalone, as I want to discuss what I think it changes. Card does an interesting thing - giving us a competing POV - but as it really is competing it appeared to me to actually invalidate a lot of what we're told in EG. Maybe OSC was trying to illuminate some of the stuff in EG, but I couldn't find any way to understand these things as concordant. A lot of the scenes in battle school seem to portray Bean as being obviously the best student there, which in itself I guess isn't such a problem, but then for him to constantly know better than Ender about things struck me as being fan-fictiony. The fact that he was secretly following all the battles to make up for Ender's mistakes, was also incompatible with EG in my view. EG did suggest Bean was given a chance at command before Ender got there, but it was a failure, and I find it hard to believe that if he was such a strategic genius it really would have been a failure. I know they say Bean isn't as good a leader, but if he was issuing kickass orders I think the jeesh would have complied and had good results, whether they liked him or not. The main thing Ender did was allowing independent management by his commanders, and Bean could have done that too. And let's get serious: if Ender was really buckling under the pressure, and he tells Mazer that maybe Alai could replace him, this book makes him look like a dunce for apparently being the only one oblivious to Bean's mastery of command strategy. There are also multiple times in the book Card seems to make moves to take Ender down a peg, in order to make Bean look better. Granted, this is Bean's POV, but it's insufficiently a 'POV book' for me to accept that. It feels like some hard retcons happening regarding the situation in battle school and on Eros. I felt this was the weakest book in the series, both in writing style and also in his neglecting the given circumstances of EG in order to try to buff up Bean as this mental god.
Shadow trilogy
I rather enjoyed this trilogy, actually, even though I feel like OSC failed to quite create a believable grand build toward the Hegemon taking over the world. Because frankly, that's what I felt was needed. My biggest joy in this trilogy was to get to see a lot more of Ender's jeesh, especially in the great scene where they're all in a meeting with Graff. My biggest beef with it is the sheer amount of scrubbing of facts from EG in order to create a new storyline. I just can't see Peter from EG as being the Peter from this book. He was turned practically into a goofy comic relief character, and I can't accept that the psychopathic manipulator from EG could ever be kind or benevolent. True, his plans with Valentine did require putting on masks, and I could easily accept that a self-controlled psychopath could pretend - for his whole life if need be - to be something he's not. His experiments with tormenting Ender, which in EG were shown to be calculated and a sort of theatre designed to learn how to control people, are now referred to as being him having been temperamental and immature. I don't buy that. In EG he knew exactly what he was doing at all times, including the dissecting of squirrels. None of it was sadism, nor was it him being out of control or moody. The terror in the Lusitania trilogy of him returning is completely lost here. The Shadow books do mention from time to time that he's supposedly manipulative and self-involved, but we never see that in the text or in his thoughts. I think the Peter character was a big miss here, and so was his plan for world domination. The manner in which it happened was lackluster. And Mazer's explanation - in a hilarious scene presumably meant to address inconsistencies with EG - even makes it worse, when it says it's "impossible to be too ruthless for battle school" (a contradiction from the first book for sure), and that simply they were reserving Peter for taking over the world. B.S.! The human race was supposedly at death's door, with Ender their last and only chance, since the fleets were arriving in position. Alai couldn't have really done the job, and Bean was a fluke last-minute entry. You're telling me they'd have kept Peter back on Earth just because they thought he'd make a good Hegemon? Of what planet, once the Buggers came back and ended them? To keep Peter from battle school on some pretext is preposterous, when EG is clear that he's every bit as strategically brilliant as Ender (another retcon in this book).
Likewise, the Bean character increasingly gains prominence, following from the moves made in Ender's Shadow, and increasingly there seem to be retcons regarding how people saw him in the past, regarding just how dominating he is in all aspects of war, contrasted with Ender's own direct statement in EG that Bean is good at coming up with innovative maneuvers with a small force but can't adequately wield a larger force. That was a neat character detail of Bean, and exactly how he was used in Dragon army. But apparently now he's just better-Ender in every way, even morally, since Bean is such a good guy with no flaws. So that's an irritating through-line too. But I do like that Petra is given a super-prominent role, as I liked her in EG a lot. A pity that Alai is relegated in most of his scenes to putting up a silly act, and that Shen gets virtually no time in the book at all.
There are other retcons, like the scrubbing the EG epilogue where Graff and Mazer quit the fleet and go with Ender to serve under him out of the huge respect they have for him. Since this trilogy seems at least partially dedicated to taking the wind out of Ender's sails, it figures that even his supporters would switch to Bean. So in my head canon they still go with him after this trilogy.
I'm looking forward to the next set of books, but one thing I'm a bit sad about is that the books have ceased to have so much of a Christian theme as the basis for the stories. Not that I need my sci-fi to be Christian at all, but since Card took on that task, and succeeded, I was gratified to see him (for four books) able to tell stories with a strong moral backbone and yet without making them overtly preachy. This last four books appear to have sort of ditched that mission statement and are much more plot-oriented stories, to connect the dots between EG and the Lusitania series. From that standpoint they appear much more light and lacking substance, even though they're certainly fun reads.
I'd enjoy hearing some of your thoughts about the series, the retcons I mentioned, or anything else you valued, liked, or didn't like about the Ender books.