Conquer Club

Great series eh?

Yes... I think 6 books now? Though the first 2 (maybe 3 -- read them in combined editions, so not sure) were the best.

I really liked the Bean/Peter/Petra offshoot (Shadow of the X) better than the Ender ones. Cool way of playing out a WWIII scenario.

Supposedly, he's going to come out with a final book to join the two series again. But of course, Card has publicly admitted that he only writes another Ender book when he needs some cash, so we'll see.

Has anyone read "A War of Gifts"? How is it?

How about his other stuff? I thought that the Alvin Maker series was a bit of a let-down.

Zeppflyer wrote:I really liked the Bean/Peter/Petra offshoot (Shadow of the X) better than the Ender ones. Cool way of playing out a WWIII scenario.

Supposedly, he's going to come out with a final book to join the two series again. But of course, Card has publicly admitted that he only writes another Ender book when he needs some cash, so we'll see.

Has anyone read "A War of Gifts"? How is it?

How about his other stuff? I thought that the Alvin Maker series was a bit of a let-down.

I wasn't much impressed by Alvin, either. However, some of his other stuff was decent.

I've read Ender's Game at least 6 times in my life. The second one didn't have the battle room, so I gave up on the series after that. I could care less about the Ender's Shadow series since, if it was written only for money, and not because he was inspired to tell a story, then I don't care.

There are too many other books out there I'd rather read first.

pimpdave wrote:I've read Ender's Game at least 6 times in my life. The second one didn't have the battle room, so I gave up on the series after that. I could care less about the Ender's Shadow series since, if it was written only for money, and not because he was inspired to tell a story, then I don't care.

There are too many other books out there I'd rather read first.

Pardon. I don't mean to say that they are not good books. They most certainly are. But like Star Wars, they have an automatic audience and so are a good income generator for Mr. Card when he needs it. You really learn to love the characters, the twists and turns are perfectly done, and the ending is excellent.

I've got dozens of books sitting here in my living room, and I'll still probably read the Bean series again before I touch a third of them.

pimpdave wrote:I've read Ender's Game if it was written only for money, and not because he was inspired to tell a story, then I don't care.

A lot of times what draws authors to write is the sheer creativity of making something entirely new. Revisiting an old character, even a good one, loses something after a time. It does not mean the character is bad or limited, just that any character already created is naturally not as "open" a story as one not yet created. The exception is when they envision a character as a series from the beginning (such as the Alvin Maker series). Then creating one book after another is little different than writing new chapters... just longer.
However, sometimes the planned series wind up not doing as well (Alvin did no impress me either, I have to say) and those books they did not initially intend as series wind up being truly good books.

That said, if you are into battle action, you might not like the rest of the Ender series... it gets pretty esoteric and somewhat strange in parts.

Yeah, that's what other fans have told me. I do genuinely love that first novel though, and would love to see it adapted to film.

Just don't let Orson Scott Card write the script. That's like, one of the key ingredients to guaranteeing film fail, when the author of the novel writes the script.

Of course there are exceptions, but they just serve to prove the rule.

I really enjoyed all of the books from the Ender's series.
I want more.