Outside A Dog

Ender In Exile is billed as a ‘direct sequel’ to Ender’s Game.  Never mind that it was written 25 years after EG.  Card has revisited the EG world numerous times since the original, and it almost seems as if Ender is nothing but a cash cow for him at this point.  Not many authors can revisit a world 25 years later and write a direct sequel that measures up.  Card is not an exception here.

Many of the things that so endeared me to Ender’s Game are gone here.  In the original, Card did a great job of making you empathize with Ender.  Other kids viewed him as smug, arrogant and distant, but the reader viewed him as conflicted and emotionally tortured.  In this book, Ender comes off as exactly what some of the characters view him as — an arrogant, smart-assed brat.  I found myself enjoying the beatdown that Ender receives at the hands of one of the characters.

The pacing is also off.  The first entire arc of the story takes up about 75% of the book, wraps up in a completely unsatisfying manner, and then jumps into another arc that spans a chapter or two.  The main antagonist of this second arc does a complete 180 in his thinking in about a paragraph, which given his huge intelligence, isn’t entirely inconceivable, but still comes off as annoying and unbelievable.  Ender’s sister Valentine, who is a major part of his life and psyche, is almost non-existent in the book, even though she is present the entire time.

If you’re a fan of the Ender series, then I’d give this book a read for completeness’ sake, but it’s nowhere near the caliber of the original, or even Speaker for the Dead, Card’s second book in the Ender universe.