Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card

Why ruin a good momentum... next on my iPod I had the last part of the Ender Wiggin saga (although Card has promised one more book "if he doesn't die first"). Children of the Mind continues seconds after Xenocide, the previous book, and indeed Orson Scott Card has said that logically they are one book in two parts. Where Xenocide constentrated much on Han Qing-jao and Han Fei-tzu, and their discovery of Jane, Children of the Mind concentrates on young Valentine and Peter, Ender's "children of the mind" and their quest to stop both Jane's destruction and the fleet that has come to destroy Lucitania.

And true enough, Children of the Mind is not really a book on it's own right - it wouldn't make much sense to read it without the three previous books, but then again if you've read the previous books it wouldn't make much sense not to read this one. There is more action in this one compared to Xenocide, but Card always leaves room for philosophical discussions which I enjoyed greatly. Everything is tied up so neatly in the end - very satisfying albeit sickly sweet.

However what I though of quaint in Xenocide - the planet of Path were everyone was Chinese and culture was Chinese - was starting to get puerile in Children of the Mind. So I can see that there are some people that might be very traditional and isolationist, even after thousands of years of colonising the galaxy - but no, every single planet we find is occupied by a single culture. Divine Wind, Japanse. Pasifica, Samoan. Of course Lucitania, Portugese. What, people never learn/want to mingle? I don't believe that for a second.

Still I can't deny it - Ender saga is a good one, and I really enjoyed all the books. So much so, in fact, that I think I'll have to move on the the parallel Shadow books just to keep up the regular dose.

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