Regular price: $20.99
The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador’s telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it’s hard to know what to make of it. It’s massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
El Cavador has other problems. Their systems are old and failing. The family is getting too big for the ship. There are claim-jumping corporate ships bringing Asteroid Belt tactics to the Kuiper Belt.
Why we think it’s a great listen: It’s easy to say that when it comes to sci-fi you either love it or you hate it. But with Ender’s Game, it seems to be you either love it or you love it.... The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Enter Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, the result of decades of genetic experimentation.
The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador’s telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it’s hard to know what to make of it. It’s massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
El Cavador has other problems. Their systems are old and failing. The family is getting too big for the ship. There are claim-jumping corporate ships bringing Asteroid Belt tactics to the Kuiper Belt.
The first invasion of Earth was beaten back by a coalition of corporate and international military forces and the Chinese army. China has been devastated by the Formic's initial efforts to eradicate Earth life forms and prepare the ground for their own settlement. The Scouring of China struck fear into the other nations of the planet; that fear blossomed into drastic action when scientists determined that the single ship that wreaked such damage was merely a scout ship. There is a mothership out beyond the solar system's Kuiper Belt, and it's heading into the system.
Ender Wiggin won the Third Formic war, ending the alien threat to Earth. Afterwards, all the terraformed Formic worlds were open to settlement by humans, and the International Fleet became the arm of the Ministry of Colonization, run by Hirum Graff. MinCol now runs Fleet School on the old Battle School station, and still recruits very smart kids to train as leaders of colony ships, and colonies.
Rigg is well trained at keeping secrets. Only his father knows the truth about Rigg’s strange talent for seeing the paths of people’s pasts. But when his father dies, Rigg is stunned to learn just how many secrets Father had kept from him - secrets about Rigg’s own past, his identity, and his destiny. And when Rigg discovers that he has the power not only to see the past, but also to change it, his future suddenly becomes anything but certain.
The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador’s telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it’s hard to know what to make of it. It’s massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
El Cavador has other problems. Their systems are old and failing. The family is getting too big for the ship. There are claim-jumping corporate ships bringing Asteroid Belt tactics to the Kuiper Belt.
Why we think it’s a great listen: It’s easy to say that when it comes to sci-fi you either love it or you hate it. But with Ender’s Game, it seems to be you either love it or you love it.... The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Enter Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, the result of decades of genetic experimentation.
The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador’s telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it’s hard to know what to make of it. It’s massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
El Cavador has other problems. Their systems are old and failing. The family is getting too big for the ship. There are claim-jumping corporate ships bringing Asteroid Belt tactics to the Kuiper Belt.
The first invasion of Earth was beaten back by a coalition of corporate and international military forces and the Chinese army. China has been devastated by the Formic's initial efforts to eradicate Earth life forms and prepare the ground for their own settlement. The Scouring of China struck fear into the other nations of the planet; that fear blossomed into drastic action when scientists determined that the single ship that wreaked such damage was merely a scout ship. There is a mothership out beyond the solar system's Kuiper Belt, and it's heading into the system.
Ender Wiggin won the Third Formic war, ending the alien threat to Earth. Afterwards, all the terraformed Formic worlds were open to settlement by humans, and the International Fleet became the arm of the Ministry of Colonization, run by Hirum Graff. MinCol now runs Fleet School on the old Battle School station, and still recruits very smart kids to train as leaders of colony ships, and colonies.
Rigg is well trained at keeping secrets. Only his father knows the truth about Rigg’s strange talent for seeing the paths of people’s pasts. But when his father dies, Rigg is stunned to learn just how many secrets Father had kept from him - secrets about Rigg’s own past, his identity, and his destiny. And when Rigg discovers that he has the power not only to see the past, but also to change it, his future suddenly becomes anything but certain.
High above the planet Harmony, the Oversoul watches. Its task, programmed so many millennia ago, is to guard the human settlement on this planet, to protect this fragile remnant of Earth from all threats...to protect them, most of all, from themselves.
Lanik Mueller is a "rad" - radical regenerative - a freak who can regenerate injured flesh...and trade extra body parts to the Offworld oppressors for iron. On a planet without hard metals, or the means of escape, iron offers the promise of freedom through the chance to build a spacecraft. But it is a promise which may never be fulfilled, as Lanik uncovers a treacherous conspiracy beyond his imagination.
Control dinosaurs. Tame women. Rule the world. Victor Shelby and his tribe of beautiful alien women have built a fortress to keep themselves safe, but when they encounter another tribe of survivors, Victor must leverage his dinosaur-taming abilities to negotiate either peace or violence. And violence is what Dinosaurland is all about.
At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, Ready Player One is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut—part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.
When Runnel leaves his mountain valley to head for the great city of the water mages, he has no idea of his own magical talents. But he soon finds that without meaning to, he complicates and then endangers the lives of everyone he comes to know and care about. For when it comes to magic, there are rules and laws, and the untrained mage-to-be must be careful not to tap into deep forces and ancient enmities. Otherwise, other people might end up paying the price for his mistakes.
Born into an alternative frontier America where life is hard, and folk magic is real, Alvin is gifted with power, but he must learn to use his gift wisely. Dark forces are arrayed against Alvin, and only a young girl with second sight can protect him.
Orson Scott Card is a master storyteller, who has earned millions of fans and reams of praise for his previous science-fiction and fantasy works. Now he steps a little closer to the present day with this chilling look at a near-future scenario: a new American Civil War. The American Empire has grown too fast, the fault lines at home are stressed to the breaking point, and the war of words between Right and Left has collapsed into a shooting war.
It's just another day of high school for Zack Lightman. He's daydreaming through another boring math class, with just one more month to go until graduation and freedom - if he can make it that long without getting suspended again. Then he glances out his classroom window and spots the flying saucer.
Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.
The survivors have come to settle in the mountains of Wyoming, fighting day in and day out to establish a home for themselves in a near-empty world. Things are good at first; scavenging is a workable, short-term solution that seems to be providing all they need. But they know that it’s only a matter of time before the food runs out. They need to scramble to find a sustainable solution before the clock stops, and for a little handful of people up in the mountains, the odds don’t seem very favorable.
Here is the novel that will be forever considered a triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Maud'dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family and would bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.
The Ruhar hit us on Columbus Day. There we were, innocently drifting along the cosmos on our little blue marble, like the Native Americans in 1492. Over the horizon came ships of a technologically advanced, aggressive culture, and BAM! There went the good old days, when humans got killed only by each other. So, Columbus Day. It fits. When the morning sky twinkled again, this time with Kristang starships jumping in to hammer the Ruhar, we thought we were saved.
Ender’s Shadow explores the stars in this all-new novel....
At the end of Shadow of the Giant, Bean flees to the stars with three of his children - the three who share the engineered genes that gave him both hyper-intelligence and a short, cruel physical life. The time dilation granted by the speed of their travel gives Earth’s scientists generations to seek a cure, to no avail. In time, they are forgotten - a fading ansible signal speaking of events lost to Earth’s history.
But the Delphikis are about to make a discovery that will let them save themselves, and perhaps all of humanity in days to come. For there in space before them lies a derelict Formic colony ship. Aboard it, they will find both death and wonders - the life support that is failing on their own ship, room to grow, and labs in which to explore their own genetic anomaly and the mysterious disease that killed the ship’s colony.
I have loved all the Ender and Shadow series book so far. I'm reading (listening) to them in chronological order and I have thoroughly enjoying them. When I came up to this story, I was very excited to see what happened to Bean and his three children after they entered the spaceship. I think that this story allowed us to see exactly that. We got to meet his children, all grown up and brilliant and immature. The performance by all the readers is amazing and had me engulfed in the story.
As the story progressed, I loved every minute of it: the relationship between Bean and his children, the relationships between each of the children, the power struggle between the two boys, and the exploration of the ship. When the end neared, I could not sense it, which I am usually able to do. Then it ended and I was left hanging, waiting for the second half of the book to begin.
As Card explained in the author's note, this was an experiment of a half-novel to see if there was a market for such a length. Honestly, I think that this was not long enough to stand on its own as a book, especially when one compares it to the lengths of his other Ender and Shadow novels. I would declare this experiment a failure. It was too short. This could have worked if this was the first book in a series or a stand-alone book. However, to introduce a half-novel in the middle of a series of full length novels was not the smartest of ideas.
14 of 14 people found this review helpful
Would you listen to Shadows in Flight again? Why?
Yes, it is chock full of nuances, information and mysteries that I love about this series.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Shadows in Flight?
The discovery of the mystery ship, and the processes Bean and the kids go through to determine what they should do.
What does the narrators bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
The narrators are the same as previous Shadow and Ender books, and I love that they have kept it consistent over the years. I also love that the author has personal involvement in the production of the audiobooks.
Seperate voices for each character helps distinguish each point of view (since they are often so different) is great, the personality each voice lends to the characters is important, and a great decision made by the producers.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The end, I wont spoil it, but I shed a couple tears.
Any additional comments?
This is a short novel, according to Card, he felt he had to tell this story before telling another story (coming soon I presume) and the length is just right. If you have listened to and enjoyed previous Shadow or Ender stories, you will love this one, and I think it is as good as the best of these series. Even though it is shorter than most novels of Cards, I did not feel cheated or that the length was not worth my purchase, I might suggest just paying the purchase price, rather than your monthly credit, if you want to maximize your value.
I love the fact that Orson Scott Card has little "commentaries" at the end of his books, its like getting a short "Bonus feature" like you get on DVD's. I wish more authors did this (I think Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter did this as well). This bonus adds even more value to my purchase, thank you Mr. Card!
5 of 5 people found this review helpful
Any additional comments?
I'm a huge fan of OSC and most especially of the Enderverse novels however that last two full length novels he has written in this series, A War of Gifts and Ender in Exile felt a bit like fluff. Sure if you are a Card junkie like me then you'll want to read them but they are only adding a little icing to a story to was finished long ago. Shadows in Flight finally gets back to the story fans like me have been waiting for years. What happens to Bean and his children after they leave earth. Even though its a shorter book, it didn't seem like filler between novels but a new story that needed telling and OSC does it with his usual finesse.
It was a great listen with such an amazing cast of narrators. I don't know what I'm going to when the movie comes out and I hear voices other than Stephen Rudniki or Scott Brick. It just won't seem right after so long of listening to them do it so well.
Can't wait for Shadows Alive.
29 of 34 people found this review helpful
My tenth read in the Ender’s Game series, and with all the prequels and sequels, I’m not exactly sure where I am in the “Enderverse.” Anyway, this is one of the shorter novels, and involves Beane hurtling through space at near light speed with three of his children, searching for a cure to the gigantism that will kill them by age 20. I enjoyed it well enough, especially the flashes of that same brilliant imagination present in most of these books. However, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you know all the backstory.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
Hello. I am a fan of fantasy books but I often delve into the scifi genre, especially when Orseon Scott Card is the author. I am a huge fan of Ender's Game and the sequels involving Ender and Valentine. I stayed away from the other books involving Peter the Hegemon and Bean because they didn't involve Ender, at least not directly. Boy, was I wrong to do so. I sampled the free preview for this book and found myself wanting to know more. I really enjoyed this book and although I wish it had ended differently (I won't say how because I don't reveal spoilers) butI'm hoping in the future Mr Card will continue on with this story line. It is not Ender but it is enjoyable in its own right. The characters pull you in and as always, the author's writing style keeps you reading. Often I plan on spending maybe 30 miuntes but end up putting it down 2 hours later. Card's talent shines throughout this book.
If you like Ender and his "universe", you will enjoy this book. One thing I think I should add.....I didn't read the previous (I think it was 3) books in this series and I didn't feel I missed out on anything in this book because of it. Sure, I would have known more of the back story if I had read the earlier books and sometime I will go back and read them because as the Title above states, I didn't realize I liked Bean this much.
Thanks
--Wesley
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
Would you listen to Shadows in Flight again? Why?
Great continuation of the story....
Any additional comments?
Would like to have seen a way for Bean to continue.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
Some of the reviews indicate that this novel was awful but I respectively disagree. While it wasn't as good as Ender's Game or Ender's Shadow, it was a lot better than some of the other books in the series. This novel draws a connection between the Ender and Bean storyliness. It might be confusing if you haven't read those books.
I enjoyed the novel. It was quite short, so it wasn't a huge investment of time like some of the others. However, I was left wandering about the new characters and would be interested in reading more about them.
The narration was great. Each character had a unique narrator. My favourite was Scott Brick as Bean.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
I am a long time fan of this series and enjoyed the read. If you are new to the series go back and start with Ender's Game first. If you have already read the series up to this point why are you wasting time reading my review? Not the best in the series, but good. If you've read everything so far this one is a must. For me the best narration is the type that becomes a transparent vehicle for the story. My highest praise for narration is that I didn't notice it. I didn't notice it here. If you love the Ender series definitely read this book. If you are new go to the beginning as this story really depends on you having a history with the character Bean. I have loved this series since beginning it in high school. If you've some how missed the series you have to go and read it from the beginning.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
What made the experience of listening to Shadows in Flight the most enjoyable?
The Cast was Amazing
Would you be willing to try another book from Orson Scott Card? Why or why not?
Yes, this is the first one, i didn't enjoy of the 20+ i have read.
What about the narrators???s performance did you like?
Voice and emotion of the reading
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
none
Any additional comments?
I hope he gives up on this Short Book experiment. Its fine for new stories, but not on sequel
5 of 6 people found this review helpful
I have never disliked any book/story from Mr Card before the one. The story felt forced and I did not really connect to the characters , except for Bean and only due to the other books in the series. I found the afterword more interesting then the story. To readers new to the enderverse start with the beginning on the shadow series or Ender's Game. I think that only real enderverse fans will appreciate this book and even then will not be high on the reread list.
22 of 29 people found this review helpful
fitting finale for Bean. would have (selfishly) loved more. a poignant ending that felt satisfying.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful
Didn't change my life like some of the others in the series but still good.