Review: Xenocide

Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

With this book in the Ender series, it feels like Ender has jumped the shark. The action of the first part revolves around some philosophical arguing over dealing with alien species, especially when to save one, or humanity itself, you may have to destroy another. Here, we see the various permutations of 4 sentient species working for or against each other. It gets to be quite involving. Trekkies know “the Prime Directive”, and episodes that dealt with this rule on dealing with alien civilizations involved the most philosophical pondering and actions based on this belief. This Ender story is of the same family. The story concludes with some truly odd occurrences that seem aimed to extend the story, and these events appear to the be basis of the next book in the series. While it seems a pretty weak step in the storytelling, akin to “magic happens”, the next book does seem to have an interesting basis built in this book.

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