Xenocide by Orson Scott Card

It's been while since I read the previous Ender Wiggin book, but I always kind of wanted to read more. Xenocide has been playing for couple of weeks on my iPod and I finished it yesterday. Again, Orson Scott Card changes his style from the previous book - Xenocide is very slow and philosophical book where were little is happening and much is said.

The book picks off where Speaker of the Dead finished, relatively anyway - as in ships traveling near the speed of light time slows, for some people only a month has passed whereas planet-side it's been 30 years. Most of the book is dedicated to philosophical nature of the impossible situation the planet Lusitania finds itself in. There are three distinct intelligent species on Lusitania - the native Pequeninos, instectoid Buggers with their hive queen and humans, of which the first two are unique and only exist on Lusitania. There are two problems - firstly, there is a virus called descolada that is in every living thing on Lusitania that is extremely contagious and kills everything foreign it comes in touch with, including the small human colony that is slowly running out of options as the possibly also intelligent virus adapts to their defenses. Secondly, there's a fleet sent by the Starways Congress to destroy Lusitania and it's inhabitants, and stopping the fleet would most likely kill the fourth intelligent being present on the planet, the multi-dimensionsal being called Jane.

So problems are numerous but can be condensed to one question: who has the right to live? The small human colony on Lusitania? Their survival depends on the destruction of possibly intelligent descolada virus, who in turn keeps everything else on Lusitania - including the Pequeninos - alive, and destroying it would mean killing them. On the other hand the Hive Queen is building ships to escape Lusitania before the destroyer fleet arrives - but they in turn would take descolada with them that could then threaten rest of humanity. Stopping the fleet in turn will most likely cost Jane's life. I found the philosophical discussions extremely interesting, as there really are no good answers.

Then towards the end the question suddenly became about physics, and a completely new world model was created that makes all the questions pretty much irrelevant which was a bit of an anticlimax. Card's characters are all just bunch of Mary Sues, and they can solve these impossible problems in the matter of days when it comes to it. The invention of outer space means that anyone can create anything just by wishing it into being, which was really too much.

But still, I quite enjoyed it, and I can't even explain why. It was a very well written book, and for most parts logical and enjoyable. Now I'm too into this story, and I'll probably have to get the next book too...

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