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)

You get to see Ender in a new light

What did you love best about Xenocide?

That Ender is seen needing his 'sister' to save himself.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Xenocide?

Trying to figure out the end of the book.

Decent, but different

If you're looking for a more action filled psychological science fiction story like Ender's game, Xenocide will disappoint. Instead your treated to a philosophical and very character building sequel, which seeks to explain more personal relationships than planet crushing. Overall it's worth a read, if only to take one step further into the Enderverse.

To the editor: Dynamic of the speech

Any additional comments?

Listening to it using an earplug can be painful. While the loudness of the sentences are normal, the beginning of the first word after a shorter silence can be extremely loud. Some dynamizer during recording was working and the result is not the best.
The loudness of the overall book should be normalized.
Yes, it could be listened with different loudness but imagine a morning bus commuting to the work...
At least for me, the artistic effort is good enough to explain and highlight the emotional parts without emphasizing the first words so much. I would be happy to re-download it with different sound quality.

awesome book

I really enjoyed the philosophical concepts in this book, I will have to listen a few more times to grasp it all.

Loved it completely through!

Card wrote a deep sci-fi that really grabbed my brain through a philosophical exploration of truth.

Inexplicably fantastic

This book is very long and I had to take a break half way through for about a week in order to finish. Not because the book was bad but because it was, in the authors very own words, "very talky". Despite that, the Enderverse is one of unparalleled complexity to the point where the future science explained is so well done that it sounds not only real, but easy. Read this is you felt Speaker for the Dead left a hole in you, but if you never read it I feel like you won't be missing much unless you absolutely LOVE the Enderverse. I do, so on to book 4 I go!

Not sure how I feel about this one.

I love the writing and there are some truly great moments. That being said, I’m a fan of philosophical debates and discussions but it seems to be over done here. I mean, it would seem that every decision has to be discusses at nauseam. I guess I wouldn’t mind it as much if the story progressed further than it did.

Voice acting ruined it

I love the story but I just don't understand the directing in this book. There are like 8 or 9 narrators, all doing all characters in seemingly random parts.
There were a few parts where it's a conversation between 3 or so characters. The part is being narrated by one person, going well, then WHAM! mid sentence it's a different narrator. It's so jarring and immediately rips you out of the story. I had to share a couple of these with my best friend so he could hear how ridiculous it was.

If it weren't for wanting to get through the series and this being the only copy of this book on audible, I would not have listened to it.

Great cast!

The cast was amazing, their performances really helped bring this grand story together. Every character was distinguished and their accents were great. This entire product was perfect. I already listened to Speaker for the Dead with this cast and I look forward to joining them in Children of the Mind.

Worth a listen

The performances in this series definitely increase the value of the writing. The story is good, but forces you to read Children of the Mind for closure.