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Originally Posted by knivesout These are the 'Ender's' sequels that youve read, right, not 'Speaker for the Dead' and 'Xenocide'? |
There are two streams of "sequels" to "Ender's Game", and neither of these streams are really sequels to "Ender's Game" in any strict sense of the word (as in, the next one picks up more or less where the previous one left off). The first stream are the aforementioned "Speaker for the Dead", "Xenocide", and "Children of the Mind". The other stream begins with "Ender's Shadow", which tells more or less the same story as "Ender's Game" but from the perspective of Bean, a character that does not appear until about halfway or so through "Ender's Game". "Shadow of the Hegemon" and "Shadow Puppets" are the sequels to "Ender's Shadow". They follow Bean and the other Battle School graduates and are much more in the way of traditional sequels than the "sequels" to "Ender's Game" are.
I would agree to an extent with Hypes's evaluation that the "Bean" stream gets pretty repetitive pretty quickly, especially "Shadow Puppets". Personally, I didn't find "Speaker for the Dead" and the rest of the novels of that stream to be repetitive in the least, and I enjoyed all three of them. I think "Xenocide" was my favorite. It tackles some interesting philosophical questions in an interesting way, and also does something very interesting with the idea of obsessive-compulsive behavior. I also think it is intereting that Card has said that what "Ender's Game" really is, is a prologue he wrote so that he could write these other three novels (the first stream). Of course, as you probably know, "Ender's Game" actually started out as a short story.