Children of the Mind

By: Orson Scott Card

Narrated by: Gabrielle de Cuir, John Rubinstein

Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

The planet Lusitania is home to three sentient species: the Pequeninos, a large colony of humans, and the Hive Queen, who was brought there by Ender Wiggin. But now, once again, the human race has grown fearful; the Starways Congress has gathered a fleet to destroy Lusitania. Ender's oldest friend, Jane, an evolved computer intelligence, can save the three sentient species of Lusitania. She has learned how to move ships outside the universe, and then instantly back to a different world, abolishing the light-speed limit. But it takes all the processing power available to her, and the Starways Congress is shutting down the network of computers in which she lives, world by world.

Soon Jane will not be able to move the ships. Ender's children must save her if they are to save themselves.

Children of the Mind is the fourth book in Orson Scott Card's The Ender Saga.

Browse more titles in the Ender Wiggin series.

©1996 Orson Scott Card (P)2004 Audio Renaissance

Critic reviews

"This is a worthy ending to what might be styled a saga of the ethical evolution of humanity, a concept seldom attempted before and never realized with the success Card achieves here." (Booklist)

"Card's prose is powerful." (Publishers Weekly)

Another wonderful story in the Ender-verse

Another wonderful story in the Ender-verse. Ender's story continues and follows his children of his mind.

The Cconclusion !?!

This book finished the story of Ender's but with an unexpected continuation. I will now move into the Ender's Shadow series.
I have read many books by Orson Scott Card and enjoyed them all! Read Pathfinder!

Too much back story

Pretty good but too much rehash of prior books. Also too much internal, redundant chatting. So good story, well read. Could have been much shorter.

Pretty good.

Pretty good. I can't wait for the next book in the series. A lot of good theological stuff.

Amazing! so contemplative

I enjoy conteplating the meaning of life. Children of the Mind had me contemplating the meaning of many species' lives as well as the different parts of each life. Awesome.

A Tremendous Story, from an unfortunately evil author

It is a modern tragedy, that the vision of author Orson Scott Card can pierce through to the very core of the hearts of men, and yet be so addled and drowned in the conservatism of his twisted and decaying morality as to wound his prospective fan. This book, as with many of his works, is a triumphal masterpiece, weakened only by the blood-spatters found on their creator's hand.

Excellent

This was the last of the end or series of books that I've listen to I haven't listened to any of the shadow series this, ties it all together awesome book and
awesome series

Mind working wonderment

Keeps your mind working the entire time. The voice actors add to the story with their accents to accent a wondenderful mind workout of a book.

progressive parable, light attention to detail

Like with Xenocide, Orson Scott Card (OSC) continues making ethical dilemmas and having his characters reason on them ad infinitum until the 13 hour runtime of the audiobook is mostly dialectic on about 5 different encounters that in an action/adventure book could have been covered in two chapters. Unlike Xenocide, though, Children of the Mind doesn't really go anywhere. Sure, it resolves all the problems that Xenocide laid out, but it doesn't tell us as much. Xenocide's aggressive retconning (I think) of how the Ansible Network works told us what is a soul in OSC's universe here, but we have to go into laborious detail now.

There's not really much to go on as far as characters here. The conflicted, clever girl from Xenocide, Han Qing-Jao, was killed off, and while Wong Mu is pretty good, mostly what replaces Qing-Jao for intrigue is that Quara is pretty annoying. Even then, Quara is not nearly as annoying as Miro was in Xenocide. What really irks me is that all the characters know what all the other characters know, and OSC even has a hard time keeping their secrets straight. At one moment only the Hive Queen knows, then the next Ender has known all along. Or Wong Mu, who is 14 (or was in the last book, maybe retconned), knows the intricate details of Ender's life despite constant repetition that she was not educated, that what he did happened 3000 years ago, and she spoke to Ender for all of about 3 sentences in total. Also, there isn't much character development here. Characters fall in love with each other simply because they're men and women near each other, people overcome their trials simply by wishing them away (although Xenocide did this just as much), and many characters never seem to grow... they tend to, at best, become different people.

Apropos, OSC's insights on the soul and the nature of sentience and species aren't really satisfying here. He introduced some interesting twists in Xenocide that are resolved in the most obvious ways in CotM which just cancel out the difference. It's quite frustrating to reflect on.

Thankfully, the constant arguing and the voice actors getting too into it has been toned down. But, at the same time, there are fewer voices in this production than all the audiobooks before it... so I actually started to miss Xenocide even though it could at times be painful to listen to.

I enjoyed that at one point you get the POV of a new character and it very much calls back to Ender's Game. There's a bit of fan service in this book, much more than Speaker or Xenocide. And the proverb Xenocide introduced, on the dichotomy of Ender's Xenocide and the Lusitania Fleet's, has a nice rhyme to it. Children of the Mind is a good enough capstone, but it feels flat, and almost the whole time I was hungry to return to the style of Ender's Game or Speaker for the Dead. Xenocide and Children of the Mind pretty clearly pale in comparison. I'm also unsure if I want to continue with OSC's works as a result. Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead were truly inspired, but I think his writing seems to be in a tail spin at this point in the series.

2 Clear Schools of thought.

Reading the reviews, I found two prevailing views. "Bravo" and "Boo!". Little in between. The "Bravo"'s enjoyed a thoughtful and insightful tale telling. The "Boo"'s missed the action found in the first novel of this series Ender's Game.

Read what the auther says . . .
. . ."I have never found it surprising that the existing sequels -- Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind -- never appealed as strongly to those younger readers. The obvious reason is that Ender's Game is centered around a child, while the sequels are about adults; perhaps more importantly, Ender's Game is, at least on the surface, a heroic, adventurous novel, while the sequels are a completely different kind of fiction, slower paced, more contemplative and idea-centered, and dealing with themes of less immediate import to younger readers." . . .

He further went on to separate the two tales. Saying that Ender's Game stands on it's own. The following 3 books are their own tale.

Bottom line: They are all great books, but if you seek action stop at Ender's Game. Good thought provoking writing continues in the other books in the series, but much less action oriented.