Xenocide

Volume Three of the Ender Saga

By: Orson Scott Card

Narrated by: Scott Brick, Gabrielle de Cuir, Amanda Karr, John Rubinstein, Stefan Rudnicki

Length: 20 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

Xenocide is the third installment of the Ender series. On Lusitania, Ender found a world where humans and pequeninos and the Hive Queen could all live together; where three very different intelligent species could find common ground at last. Or so he thought. But Lusitania also harbors the descolada, a virus which kills all humans it infects, but which the pequeninos require in order to transform into adults. The Starways Congress so fears the effect of the descolada, should it escape from Lusitania, that they have ordered the destruction of the entire planet and all who live there. The Fleet is on its way and a second Xenocide seems inevitable, until the Fleet vanishes.

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©1991 Orson Scott Card (P)2000 Audio Renaissance

Critic reviews

"Thought-provoking, insightful, and powerfully written." (School Library Journal)
"As a storyteller, Card excels in portraying the quiet drama of wars fought not on battlefields but in the hearts and minds of his characters." (Library Journal)

Too much talking!!!

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Less talk and more action between characters!

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

The enter play between each species.

Was Xenocide worth the listening time?

It was slow reading.

It'll throw you for a loop

It's not exactly what you'd expect after Speaker, but it's good! like a lot of his work, the third Act is a completely different story.

Fuck Novenia and Ching Jao

It was kind of ridiculous but I liked it. Novenia and Ching Jao are both a pill. Their stupid antics made the book less enjoyable. For "smart" characters it was painful to listen to their unreasoning. But this book made me understand how the author thinks. Good quality literature.

Orson Scott Card is incredible

These narrators are so amazing at creating the emotions and ideas that Orson had written. A piece I thoroughly enjoy about the narration is that you can sometimes hear their inhales, exhales, and vocal disturbances. This little piece makes the people feel so much more alive in the book. As I listen and create this vision in my head, it's subtle things such as that that help to mold the picture.

Enjoyable

Good listen, I enjoyed the different voices, though at times the shift between them felt abrupt.

Too over the top in what didn’t matter

The story continues from where Speaker for the Dead left off. I did not enjoy this listen and considered many times to just call it quits. I did complete it. Too often you find yourself listening to arguments about philosophical nonsense for well over 30 minutes. These discussions rarely moved the story. Then you finally land on something interesting and the story just skips to resolved. The performance is often cringeworthy. There are multiple readers which isn’t a bad thing but the readers read parts of chapters rather than for specific characters. You might find two or more different readers for the same character throughout the book. It is very distracting.

Five Stars

In a brilliant move, customers are now forced to write reviews if they want to rate books. This is a waste of time both for me and for whoever reads this.

Another slam dunk

Wow!! Just wow. Sometimes I find it hard to find a story that is entertaining and intelligent at the same time. I am ashamed that I haven’t read this series sooner.

Personal note/comment: I understand that not every character in a story can be the person you think they should be. Or redeem themselves as you thing they should, but you hope nevertheless that they come to their senses. Uhh Qing-jao… she started out as a character I loved and through her selfishness and pride ended up being the character I “hated”. She called it being humble and obedient… all I saw was selfishness when she couldn’t look past what she thought and felt. But alas I do understand that there are many people like this and they all can’t be heroes of my heart. Hats off to the author for keeping characters real even if I wanted them all to be what I thought they should be.

Discovering this new plague was fun!

The new species that they introduce in this book was well written and made my brain twist so much.

Unlike anything else

This story is thick with philosophical ideas like nothing else and somehow it all connects into this amazing story.