Xenocide, by Orson Scott Card

Reviewed by: The Blind Monkey

Ender’s Back. And he’s so darn facinating that last week, after re-reading the Goose’s “Ender’s Game” review, I decided it was time to visit him again (Probably the 5th or 6th time I’ve read this book)!

So what keeps me coming back?? Well, there’s the interstellar politics. And the deftly described, magnificently executed twists of the plot. Or perhaps it’s the way he opens your mind and allows your simple little brain to conceive of other species in human terms. But I think it’s the fact that Card can address the most crucial of ethical and philosophical delimas, and still astound and entertain.

Xenocide finds our cast on the outmost colony of Lusitania. He’s saved the Hive Queen and helped the buggers begin the daunting task of rebuilding of their sentient race. And he’s helped billions to understand the pequininos by writing the Life of Human.

But Lusitania also harbors the devestating descolada virus. A virus that violently destroys the humans it infects, but that also enables the piggies to transform into the third life. Because of this threat, the Starways Congress has sent a fleet to use the ‘little Doctor’ to destroy Lusitania, and with it, the only two known sentient species known to man.

Xenocide will astound. It will provoke. It will beg the question – who is Ramen, and who is Varalese?

Maybe we’re the varalese. Maybe xenocide is built into the human psyche as into no other species. In Volume 4 of the Ender Quartet, Card asks if maybe the best thing that could happen for the moral good is for the descolada to get loose, spread throughout the human universe and break us down to nothing.

I highly recommend this book. Ender’s Game gave us action, and Speaker for the Dead gave us sociological exploration. But Xenocide turns a philosophical eye towards the nature of the human race and in the process, to origins of the forces that make us what we are.

It’ll make you think – I guarantee it!

The Goose Is COOKED!! 4/8/99

Well it seems as though Blind Monkey has forgotten (AHEM) a few of the most salient points in this novel. Barring some of the very fantastical and interesting theoretical physics raised. We must keep in mind two things.

FIRST: This book is the first serious journey into the mind of Ender and what he is made of.

SECOND: There are FOUR sentient species discussed here and the three already mentioned are the least interesting in this installment. I leave it to you to find the fourth and discover if I am right or wrong.

– The Goose

Mass Market Paperback Reprint edition (August 1992) Tor Books; ISBN: 0812509250 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.34 x 6.73 x 4.24