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)

Did somebody kill the editor.

This book was very longwinded. I enjoyed most of it but it really dragged on at times. I am looking at the Ender series as a whole and I suggest listening to the first three. The story is great it just takes so long to get there. Still, I will listen to the last book in the series because Ender is a very good story.

You'll be a better person for it...

I've listened to all of the Ender productions released so far and I read all the Ender books years ago. I have never read a Sci-fi series that was so comprehensive in the range of disciplines that it touches on to tell the story. This book, as with all the others, is wonderfully narrated with (something like) four narrators sharing different sections and essentially representing separate points of view in the characters. Very good idea, very well done, and a VERY good example for other UNABRIDGED (CONFOUND IT!) audiobooks. I highly recommend this series for both it's entertainment value and its intellectual stimulation. I would even go so far as to say that for many people it could literally be a life changing experience! Science, philosophy, psychology, sociology, politics, world cultures... It's all in there!

Disappointing but other wise ok

All of the deep complexity of Ender and his family seems to have been lost in this book. I like seeing whats going on with the Hive queen and the piggies but the chapters with Qing-Jao are honestly just painful. All of the intellectual quandaries and debates that the first two books seem to have been replaced by a lexicon of logical fallacies that scott card seems to be trying to push as some higher moral standard that just falls short and belittles the growth and intelligence of his characters from the first two books.
I would list specifics however I do not wish to spoil any thing for people. This book has me very nervous for the rest of the series, and I may not finish the series if the books keep going this direction.


With that being said, The narration as usual is AAA+ Stefan Rudnicki is perhaps one of my favorite narrators and the rest of the cast were great as well.

I loved Enders game and Speaker for the dead, I just hope the books after Xenocide are better

OK Sci-Fi

This is one of a series of books written about the future and a group of people who grew up in it. It has some really good portrayals of what aliens might be like, but seems unrealistic when it comes to the inter-communications among species. It does get boring in many places with so much detail, but the plot is OK and the author does think out his characters pretty well. I didn't enjoy the series of books as much as I had hoped from reading the Audible write-ups, but it is OK and once you get through some of the boring stuff, you might like it. Don't bother with reading Children of the Mind. It is the most boring in the series and doesn't bring anything to the next in the series. It is mostly a discussion on theories with no substance.

To each his or her own I guess.

I just think its a matter of interest. Something that might tug at you as being irritating might sing to someone else. I enjoyed this book a lot. With some books, such as this one, you have to look past a certain plot or scheme of events that take place and just enjoy the nature.

Pleasantly tangled web fractured by many narrators

"Xenocide" continues the story but not the quality storytelling of "Speaker for the Dead".

The story itself is a pleasantly tangled web of conflicts. However, some passages drag on, belaboring obvious circumstances. Entire scenes appear unnecessary as their outcomes affect the story and character development minimally. Feel free to let your attention wander a bit at these times.

Sadly, the use of many narrators damages the audio book. Expanding on the director's goal to give a different narrator to each character's point of view, even more narrators are brought in to voice newly explored characters. The producers took this so far as to commit crimes against sound waves, though I won't point them out, hoping you didn't notice. Not all the narrators perform equally well, yet the effect could have been achieved by using only the best two - the lead male and female narrators.

"Xenocide" is a decent read if you're committed to the "Enderverse", but its fragmented narration will test that commitment.

Well that took a twist

I have to agree with a few of the reviews about how this book isn’t the best in the series. It took a weird path towards the end of the book and seemed to solve unsolvable problems that should have taken a hundred years in just a few weeks. Besides the end I liked the book over all but the last 4 hours were just not very believable and kind of goes a cliff. Just my opinion.

Great book, but some bad accents and too many narrators

I’ve loved almost every Ender book I’ve heard, this one included. The one thing I didn’t like though was how there were SO MANY different people reading it. It was too much. And then on top of that, just how bad many of the narrators did for characters that had accents. If they dropped the accents, and went down to one narrator I think this book would be much better. It’s still worth a listen though for the story, so don’t miss it

I loved it

very deep!!! this book makes you think and grasp at ideas about the soul. I found it amazing

Great book with interesting discussions

Very nice writing with much dialogue but not boring at all.
Though I would have wished for the voice actors to have agreed on which accents to use for a given character.