Ender In Exile: Book 5 of the Ender Saga (Ender Saga, #1.2) (Ender)

by Orson Scott Card

At first, Ender believed that they would bring him back to Earth as soon as things quieted down. But things were quiet now, had been quiet for a year, and it was plain to him now that they would not bring him back at all, that he was much more useful as a name and a story than he would ever be as an inconveniently flesh-and-blood person. At the close of ENDER'S GAME, Andrew Wiggin - called Ender by everyone - knows that he cannot live on Earth. He has become far more than just a boy who won a game: he is the Saviour of Earth, a hero, a military genius whose allegiance is sought by every nation of the newly shattered Earth Hegemony. He is offered the choice of living under the Hegemon's control, a pawn in his brother Peter's political games. Or he can join the colony ships and go out to settle one of the new worlds won in the war. The story of those years on the colony worlds has never been told ...until now.

• ISBN10: 1841492272
• ISBN13: 9781841492278
• Publish Date: 5 November 2009 (first published 11 November 2008)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Orbit
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 400
• Language: English

Reviews

[empressbrooke]

I was skeptical going into this - In fact, I only read it today because it has to go back to the library soon and I didn't want to return it unread. I kept thinking that it couldn't possibly be interesting since we already know what happens. Could it really be worth reading about events that were already discussed in other Ender books? Of course, I had the same type of reservations about [b:Ender's Shadow|9532|Ender's Shadow (Shadow Series, Book 1)|Orson Scott Card|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166028017s/9532.jpg|3145587] and ended up being wowed by that one.

Ender in Exile isn't the same sort of homerun that Ender's Shadow was, but that didn't stop me from tearing through it in two sittings. Seeing Ender's thought process following the end of the Formic War was much more satisfying than reading about it as events that had already occurred, as we did in [b:Speaker of the Dead|7967|Speaker for the Dead (Ender's Saga, Book 2)|Orson Scott Card|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165651993s/7967.jpg|2327777] and its sequels. I also really liked witnessing the creation of the colony program and seeing the seed that started the universe we meed in Speaker.

On the downside, I did get a little twitchy about Card retconning things for consistency. In his defense, his afterword explains his reasoning, and his reasoning mostly makes sense. I just worry he's veering into George Lucas territory when he has to start publishing new editions of his old books with changes.

Also, the subplot with Alessandra and her crazy mother seemed sort of tacked on - I couldn't really figure out what the purpose of it was, except to demonstrate Ender's brain power. I sort of wished they'd been done away with so that there was more time to focus on Ender's recovery and his removal from his family. One thing I wished the book had included was at least one response from Ender's parents to his first letter home. The text says that they continued to correspond, but we're not told any more than that. His letter packed a powerful punch, and it's a shame we didn't get to see what his parents had to say in return.

Although this is billed as a direct sequel to Ender's Game, it wouldn't make any sense without reading the Shadow books first. The loose threads in [b:Shadow of the Giant|8647|Shadow of the Giant (Shadow Series, Book 4)|Orson Scott Card|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165699277s/8647.jpg|4088] are tied up here, and while they only take up a small portion of the book, I can't imagine they would make much sense (or have much impact, since it does lay down a short summary) without having read the previous books.