Just finished Earth Unaware, Afire and Awakens.

​

Should I read the second Formic war or just skip to the Ender Series?

​

I see that the second Formic war series has a yet to be released third book. Is it worth reading The Swarm and The Hive before the Ender series even though they havent released the 3rd book in the second formic war series? Or should I just skip to the ender series?

​

Is Viktor, Rackham, Imalla and Lem in the Ender series?

A couple of days ago I started Homebody and am burning through it. It's been awhile since I have picked up a book that I have been this eager to keep reading and reading. I had given Ender a shot and just didn't care for it. What would be an OSC book you have read that made you feel the way I do about Homebody? I'd love to read it.

library cow stupendous door point voiceless abundant subsequent languid selective this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev

I have noticed that several of the couples in the Enderverse (I’m in the middle of shadow puppets) seem to feature older women and younger men.

It’s a bit unusual—anyone else notice it? Petra and Bean, Ender and Novinha (by the time he gets there), Mr and Mrs Ender (according to Wikipedia Theresa was the graduate instructor of John Paul). Even the Surly/Virlomi (I don’t know what happens with that relationship yet, not done with the book).

I’m not saying it’s good or bad but it’s noticeable to me.

Ps how old is Peter supposed to be in Shadow Puppets?

I'm a big fan of OSC, I love the Enderverse, and have enjoyed a number of his other books. I had originally read the gate thief trilogy a long time ago, and I've been listening to the audiobooks over the past few months. The first two books were not bad, though the characters are pretty lame, especially Danny and his high school friends. The third book, however, just made me cringe. There was so much saccharine pseudo-philosophical yammering about goodness and Ka and Ba and giving yourself over to others and so on. When I got to the chapter where Pat started to wonder why Danny would love her, and not Hermia, who was "everything Pat ever dreamed of being", I'd finally had enough. That is so unoriginal and lame, and following on the heels of listening to an hour of the scene where the two women struggle for control of one body and then Danny comes in and shows one of them how to get the body to accept her because "she's a better person". I can't.

1/5 would not recommend.

Just wondering

I am, for those who are confused, talking about Zdorab from the Homecoming series. It’s revealed in The Ships of Earth that he is gay, and it’s referenced multiple times between then and his eventual death in Earthfall. How his character was handled wasn’t perfect, but it was better than I expected it to be, given what we know about Card and the fact that the Homecoming series is basically Mormonism…in…spaaaaace.

First of all, the word for gay man in-universe is “zhop”, which means anus. This isn’t too surprising, given the butt-related slang that has historically been used in real life. Before the events of the story, Zdorab lived in what was basically a network of zhops on the outskirts of Basilica, which mirrors the underground lives of LGBTQ+ in the 20th century.

My worst fear after that first reveal was that Zdorab was going to either turn out to be evil or get killed off immediately. That was not the case. Zdorab is portrayed as one of the least morally corrupt men of the village and gets more flak for being a librarian than for swinging the other way. He also outlives Obring, Vas, Volemak, and Rasa before dying peacefully of old age.

Where things start to get uncomfortable is the attention dedicated to Zdorab’s fatherhood. Marriage and childbirth is a main goal for all of the characters, and with Zdorab, the battle is particularly uphill for obvious reasons. This is an example of faith conflicting with orientation, and I did feel weird reading it, as if Zdorab passed some kind of test by having children with Shedemei despite not seeing her that way. Zdorab does care about Shedemei and tells her he loves her, and I chose to interpret that as platonic connection, not Shedemei turning a gay man straight.

This is my opinion, and I want to know what y’all think.

Has a release date been announced for "The Queens"? I've been anxiously wanting to read it for years now.

There was a point where there were "insects" that ate the rock of an asteroid and then produced small spheres of metals that the insects digested out of the rock. I've read all the books in the Enderverse and I wanted to go back and reread about this process. Which books described this?

My leaky memory thinks this was also in the Aaron Johnson books/comic books? I looked for anything about this in all the wikipedia articles about the books but couldn't find it.

I just now thought about if this subreddit was a thing (took long enough lol) and I just wanted to say that Scott Card is my favorite author of all time! I will admit tho, of all his novels I have currently only ready the first 2 books in The Ender Saga 😂😭 3 is coming soon the hehe. I just absolutely love the way Scott Card writes, I obsessed over Enders Game and Speaker for the Dead like no other when I read them. Its taken me a full year to get to 3, idk why but I just want to take a good long break from the series after each book but WOW it’s been so good, I can recall books pretty good but these especially. TL;DR Sorry, I’ve been rambling, I just wanted to say I appreciate Scott Card a helluva lot.

I'm listening to the audio book currently, although I did read the book years ago.
When the main characters meet up to discuss the beginning of the rebellion they are going to carry out, and Olivenko talks about how they can use their abilities to avoid the usual pitfalls of a guerilla campaign, a main strategy they discuss is having their first raid, then the second raid the week before it, the third raid the week before the second, etc. And then they spend a bit of time discussing how it will make their first raid harder because the enemy will be prepared but won't be sure why.

Its odd because this whole series, they've seemed to understand how traveling to the past can destroy and change the future that they've already experienced to be something that they didn't experience.
In fact, just before this, Noxon and Ram were discussing this fact in the context of hiding the starship in the past, Rigg and Ram were discussing it in the context of the village girl who was raped and murdered while they were visiting another wallfold, and Umbo was ruminating on it when he jumped ahead to the future and was about take Square/Biscuit to the present.

Am I misunderstanding? Did OSC and the editor(s) just miss this somehow?

what are all of peters and valentines sudoname
and was valentine the anti-russian writer and peter the *pro-russian* writer?

Greetings Fellow OSC fans!

I'm working on my first novel, unfortunately not scifi :( but need help to find the argument in Speaker For The Dead (which Chapter) where Novinha loses her temper and completely goes off on Ender (dirty fight digs). Do any of you know where that's at? I'm hoping to analyze the structure of the argument and kind of work through what makes it so good and vivid and see how I can improve my own writing. Thank you in advance!!!!!

Per Wikipedia, there's a ton of unfinished sequels that have been planned, sometimes for decades. I recognize that Wikipedia might not have follow up comments on whether he's still planning to do them, so I thought I'd ask.

There's The Queens, presumably the last Endervwrse book, outside of hopefully a collection of all the short stories. The previous book in the Second Formic Wars trilogy was The Hive in 2019. Presumably this depends in part on Aaron Johnston.

Master Alvin, the final book of The Tales of Alvin Maker. Last book was The Crystal City in 2003.

Women of Genesis has two sequels listed, The Wives of Israel and The Sons of Rachel. Last one was Rachel and Leah in 2004.

Pastwatch. Last one was Christopher Columbus, in 1996. The Flood and The Garden fo Eden are listed as planned.

Lovelock. First and only book of the planned trilogy published in 1994. It was co-written with Kathryn Kidd, who died in 2015.

It also looked like Extinct was supposed to be a trilogy, but now it doesn't seem to be listed anywhere as actually being published, so I'm pretty confused on that one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Scott_Card_bibliography

I started with the Alvin Maker series. I keep a spreadsheet of every book I've ever read and rank each book across many different axes including depth of characters, writing quality, and general reading enjoyment (among many others). Four of the Alvin books made it into my top twenty books of all time, so that got me curious about his other works. (Alvin Journeyman was my favorite and Heartfire was my second-favorite, ranking #10 and #14 on my spreadsheet respectively.)

Then I moved on to the ever-famous Ender's Game. I was surprised by how dark the story was; it was good writing and addictive, but it felt heavy. But I moved on to the rest of the original Ender series and found them highly engrossing. Orson really pushes your buttons and tests your taboos. Are insects disgusting and scary, or are we just being bigots? Is it gruesome and gory and wrong to cut someone apart, or could it be a ritual of rebirth with real meaning in an alien culture? What does it mean to be sentient? On my spreadsheet I lumped the seven main books of Ender's story into one row on my spreadsheet as I read them back-to-back and didn't want to try to analyze them individually. As a series, they landed as #40 through #46. (Followed by Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha at #47 and Brandon Sanderson's The Well of Ascension at #48.)

Personally, what impresses me most about Orson is the meaning he puts into his books. Yes the world-building is good, but Brandon Sanderson is usually better at that (although there is an exception which I'll get to in a moment). The plot lines are always filled with interesting twists, but many authors who focus on fascinating plots do that better; the Lighthouse Duet by Carol Berg (ranked #89 and #90) has fascinating interwoven plots – perhaps the best I've ever encountered. Orson Scott Card's taboo-confrontation is excellent, but Heinlein takes on taboos at least equally well in Stranger in a Strange Land (ranked #18) and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (ranked #81). The character building that Orson Scott Card does, however, is first-class. When I think of other authors who approach such levels of character building, I think of my all-time favorite book (rank #1), Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik, and Jo Graham's Numinous World series (#9, #28, #63, etc). But Naomi is actually new to this level of depth with her characters – her former works don't display as much depth, whereas Orson shows this level of depth in book after book. While Jo Graham has deep, nuanced characters, the different ways in which they are wise feels limited in comparison to Orson's characters. Orson understands people very deeply. I don't even think the average reader can appreciate how profound his understanding is. I work in psychology and trauma healing and I can testify that Orson is brilliant.

After reading Ender's Saga, I read the six books in The Shadow Series, beginning, of course, with Ender's Shadow. Seeing Bean's role in how the events played out in Ender's Game was exhilarating. I ended up liking Bean as a character more than Ender. In a way, I feel like Ender and Bean came together into one person in Alvin, although Orson decided to make Alvin a little less brilliant at such a young age and focus more on his innate sense of good morality. My favorites from The Shadow Series were the first and last volumes: Ender's Shadow and Shadows in Flight. I found a lot of war-focused stuff in the middle a little too focused on action, although the battle tactics and war strategies were fascinating in their own right. I learned a little about world geography which was neat. This series I also ranked as a group, coming out at #99 through #104. (It's followed by Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn: A Secret History at #105 and Naomi Novik's Uprooted at #106.)

I was less enthusiastic about The First Formic War. As you can see from the above, more emphasis on battle tactics and grand strategy isn't my cup of tea. Due to how this series opens up I expected there to be more exploration of the taboo against incest, but that was left alone after the very beginning of the story. Ultimately it became a story about how much bureaucracy sucks and ultimately hurts people. The points were valid, but less interesting and insightful (to me) than the books in Ender's Saga by a long shot. This trilogy came in at #139 through #141, followed by T.J. Klune's The House in the Cerulean Sea at #142 and Steven's Brust's Vallista at #143.

A month later I read the Pathfinder trilogy and was absolutely blown away. This series contained the lessons, moral explorations, and deep characters seen in the Enderverse and in the Alvin Maker series all rolled into one elegant story that also had world-building to rival Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn or Warbreaker (ranked #30). The Pathfinder trilogy was one of those stories I had difficulty putting down, and that's unusual for me. Often I read a single chapter of a book and put it down until tomorrow, occasionally missing a day. Yet with Pathfinder it seemed I made excuses to take entire afternoons off to just read, and read, read, read! One of the beautiful aspects of this series is how the same group of characters evolves through their interactions with one another; that was something I enjoyed in Alvin Maker that was mostly absent in Enderverse. The characters in the Enderverse were often more isolated, developing in ways that were largely due to their adversity with other characters or events. In contrast, the development in Pathfinder (and Alvin Maker) is largely about friendships and family. This is something rarely done well in any novels in any genres, making Orson's mastery all the more impressive. The Pathfinder trilogy, if you haven't guessed, ranks #6 through #8 on my spreadsheet, preceded by Catherine Wilson's When Women Were Warriors at #3 through #5, and followed by Jo Graham's The General's Mistress at #9.

Next I will be delving into Orson's Homecoming series which just arrived in the mail from thriftbooks yesterday. Somehow I'm going to have to slog my way through reading the rest of Ringworld first which will be hard when I know I have more of Orson's works sitting on my “to read” shelf.

If you haven't seen the theme in what I enjoy in books yet, I'll spell it out: it's meaningfulness. I want a good story, yes, but I want something I can ruminate on for days, months, or even years to come. I want something worth discussing with friends, and puzzling out as I fall asleep at night. Other non-Orson books worth mentioning that achieve this include Richard Bach's The Bridge Across Forever (#2), Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (#25), and Johnathon Livingston Seagull (#24), Daniel Quinn's Ishmael (#13), Teal Swan's Hunger of the Pine (#35), and Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (#51).

I'm curious to hear:

1. How you would rank Orson's works against your other favorites,
2. Which Orson book(s) were your favorite,
3. How “meaningfulness” plays into your book preferences,
4. Any other thoughts you have in response to my praise and analysis.

Looking forward to hearing back from y'all. 😁

Every now and then, I have a look at OSC's website to see if there's any news on the publishing front.

I usually also check the forum. Did so a couple minutes ago again for the first time in a good while and all threads are archived.
Has the forum been closed down?

Just picked up the Swarm and didn't realize it was the second Formic War. Would it be better to read Earth Unaware, Afire, and Awakens first?

As you may know, the artist for the Laddertop books is Honoel A. Ibardolaza. I tried to find out about this artist (eg: still alive?) but his personal website and deviantart page are gone. Then I came across this tweet:

GitGudNami (real name: Honoel A. Ibardolaza) who most of you might know for their Splatoon comics, has been preying on and conditioning minors. I can confirm they altered their Discord name and deleted all messages. They even wiped their old accounts to cover their tracks.

Aug 19, 2020
https://twitter.com/mecharichter/status/1296218907909468162?lang=en

Is it the same person? And the last laddertop book was in 2013, so perhaps not directly related?

Howdy, I just finished reading the ender quintet, as well as the shadow series, and first/second forming wars sets.

I was wondering if anybody knew if he was going to add anything to it? Even something small like shadows in flight.

I am really hoping he would release a book with all of demosthenes work in it, I think that would be really cool!

This post is a little rambly, but I was curious if anyone got the sense that OSC's most recent books have fallen victim to weak/unfocused input from his book editors and publishing team.

Speaking specially to "The Last Shadow" and "Lost and Found."

The Last Shadow (2021) felt more like an early manuscript - lots of ideas, but the characters seemed rigid templates with little depth. He introduces maybe a dozen or so new characters but all but maybe 3 are meaningful, plus the dozen or so returning characters are shells of themselves. We're talking about some of the elite minds in the history of humankind (and a "god" in Jane) making uncharacteristically boneheaded decisions, then relying on some newly introduced supernatural science from another "god" (the Queen) to save the day. It just felt like a half-baked book. So I see failure on the part of the editor to steer this book in the right direction.

In his notes after one of the Ender books (can't remember which one), he talks about two reasons why people get into writing. Basically, writers get into writing because they:

• Read something that is so great and that it inspires them to try to reach that same level.
• Read something that is so poor that they begin to think that, "wow, this was really bad and it still got published and the author got paid for it. I can do better than this no problem!"

I also just finished Lost and Found (2019), now classified as book 1 of the "Micro powers" series. If you haven't heard of it, it's about an early teen with a micro power, the ability to notice lost objects (like a scrunchy or toy) and find their owners. The power is a bit more obscure, and perhaps lacking a use case compared to a super power, like the ability to shoot laser beams from your eyes, super strength, or fly, etc.

Anyway, I enjoyed the book a lot, but I couldn't help but think that the publisher didn't have a clear idea of who their target audience was. It had a lot of elements of a teen/ya book: Buddy-humor, sarcastic banter and ribbing between friends/frenemies, occasional curses/sexual humor, solving problems and overcoming the odds, coming of age/growing up/learning how to make friends/accept being different and accept others who are different, etc. It has a lot of content/lessons that would be relevant to kids/adults of all ages.

Kidnapping is used as a plot point, basically returning a lost child - which toes the line. Fine. There's also some death, which, while also a little questionable, is used mostly to explain how one of the characters is so brilliant in solving problems (for this plot point, maybe 1-2 lines too many of description). But for some inexplicable reason, there are probably about 5-10 lines in the book where it crosses the line to the darkest plots of Criminal Minds/Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/Law and Order SVU where they say the kidnappers are part of a conspiracy of little girl pedophile/snuff film/serial offenders. At moments like these, I think of video games like Super Street Fighter and think "Combo-combo, 20x super-combo!" It's like come on, folks, you already nailed the plot device, I get it. Everyone gets it: The villains are bad people. But now you're decided to paint a lot unnecessary imagery that makes people lose sleep especially when they're never really referenced again later.

... and also takes this out of the running as a recommended read for an almost ideal target age. (yeah, I was reading this with my Ender fan son and he's telling me he doesn't think he should be reading this...)

But seriously, I would say the editorial/publisher team for OSC need to ask themselves some questions on why they're putting out unpolished work or just trying to milk out sales from OSC's name as the author heads deeper into "The 3rd Age".

Curious if anyone else read these and feels this way.

On the audible website, it lists audiobooks for Laddertop 2 on 4/5/2022 and Laddertop 3 on 5/10/2022.

Is the end to the wait in sight?

Laddertop 2: https://www.audible.com/pd/Laddertop-2-Audiobook/B09JYJ27SB

• By: Orson Scott Card
• Narrated by: Emily Janice Card, Stefan Rudnicki
• Series: The Laddertop Series, Book 2
• Length: 2 hrs
• Unabridged Audiobook
• Release date: 04-05-22
• Language: English
• Publisher: Skyboat Media
• Basic training is over. For 11-year-old Robbi, the real work on the Laddertop station begins…even as its strange, dark secrets grow more compelling. 

With the help of mentally-linked robot companions, she and an elite crew of children perform the dangerous maintenance work on the Power Web. But only Robbi keeps having urgent dreams from The Givers, the alien species who bestowed upon humans all the Laddertop technology. Meanwhile, her best friend Azure goes from Laddertop reject to a recruit for a secret research mission, led by a group of rebels who don’t trust that the Givers mean no harm. 
Though on different paths, the two friends’ destinies soon collide, as they decipher an alien message and solve an ancient mystery that could either save the Earth from invasion…or trigger its imminent destruction.
©2013 Orson Scott Card and Emily Janice Rankin (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing and Skyboat Media, Inc.

Laddertop 3: https://www.audible.com/pd/Laddertop-3-Audiobook/B09K2K1FZD

• By: Orson Scott Card
• Narrated by: Emily Janice Card, Stefan Rudnicki
• Series: The Laddertop Series, Book 3
• Length: 2 hrs
• Unabridged Audiobook
• Release date: 05-10-22
• Language: English
• Publisher: Skyboat Media
• All seems lost as a giant comet hurtles toward Earth, while Robbi’s Laddertop is thrown into chaos by the unleashing of Energy Spiders that now prowl the Power Web. As Robbi races against time to save the Laddertop and reveal its final secret, Azure and the rest of her research team discover the horrible truth about the comet and the existence of a different, malevolent group of aliens: The Takers.

It’s up to these brilliant children to work together, using their special gifts and the unique bonds they share, to find a way to stop the end of the world before it’s too late.
©2022 Orson Scott Card and Emily Janice Rankin (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing and Skyboat Media, Inc.

For completeness:

Laddertop 1: https://www.audible.com/pd/Laddertop-Audiobook/B005PP1TVO

• By: Emily Janice Card, Orson Scott Card
• Narrated by: Emily Janice Card, Stefan Rudnicki
• Series: The Laddertop Series, Book 1
• Length: 1 hr and 58 mins
• Unabridged Audiobook
• Release date: 09-27-11
• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
• An original science fiction tale by the best-selling author of Ender’s Game and his daughter.

Twenty five years ago, the alien Givers came to Earth and bestowed upon the human race the greatest technology ever seen—four giant towers known as Ladders that rise 36,000 miles and culminate in space stations that power the entire planet. Then, for reasons unknown, the Givers disappeared. Due to the unique alien construction of the Laddertop space stations, only a skilled crew of children can perform the maintenance necessary to keep the stations up and running.
Back on Earth, competition is fierce to enter Laddertop Academy. It is an honor few students will achieve. Best friends Robbi and Azure, two 11-year-old girls who are candidates for the academy, will become entangled in a dangerous mystery that may help them solve the riddle of the Givers—if it doesn’t destroy the Earth first.
©2011 Orson Scott Card and Emily Janice Card (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Let's look back at some memorable moments and interesting insights from last year.

Your top 10 posts:

• "Hatrack River Forum Shutting Down" by u/Zaphod_Fragglerox
• "Orson Scott Card has begun working on Master Alvin, the seventh and final book in The Tales of Alvin Maker series" by u/ibid-11962
• "Happy Cakeday, r/orsonscottcard! Today you're 8" by u/AutoModerator
• "Guess you could call this a "SETBACK" Badum tsk." by u/Gyzard0
• "Hi everyone!" by u/Jklmw2008
• "Father Estevão vs Warmaker" by u/mack_turtle
• "The Alvin Maker series is throwing me for a loop. I feel like I missed an entire book between heart fire and the crystal city. So many events are just offhandedly referred to but I can’t find a reason why." by u/nicodeamus-yoop
• "New here" by u/sarahtoby
• "Why are all the children in the Battle School nude when not in uniform?" by u/Just_a_Lurker2
• "Questions about returning to Enders Game/Shadow/Formic Series" by u/BigYonsan

So as a supposedly gifted kid I picked up Enders Game at about age 12 or so. Devoured it and loved it. I slogged through Speaker, Xenocide and Children at the same age and didn't get as much from them (I suspect I was too inexperienced in life to connect with them the same way I did Ender's Game).

In middle/high school I discovered Ender's Shadow at the book store. Devoured it and loved it. Waited eagerly for sequels and read the next two as they came out, loved them too.

By then I was an impatient teen/adult with a driver's license, girls to date and jobs to work. My love of reading diminished somewhat and the bookstores in my city had all but died. The last Shadow book I'd read, the family resolved to go to space, seemed like a contained ending, so I didn't look for more. I chanced across the Ender's Christmas story in an airport years later and was sorely disappointed, so I just stopped looking for more from this universe (apologies if you love it, I'm a secular Grinch who likes the music and the lights but doesn't want to hear about the real meaning of Christmas anymore).

As a 36 year old man, I've decided to reread Ender's Game and the sequels, to see if age, fatherhood and exhaustion has added some context and greater perspective for me. Much to my surprise, there's at least two sequels in the Shadow Series (maybe 3, it's been so long since I read them), an entire prequel series and a novel that supposedly ties shadows to the main Ender/Speaker series.

So I'm tempted to read the new stuff too, but my time is limited and I've seen the reviews for Ender in Exile (waiting for paperback at the very least). But I can't seem to find reviews for the others.

So in your opinion, are Formic Wars, the last 3 Shadow books and Exile worth reading? Do they hold up to what came before them?

Also, any others I've missed? Last I saw this series it was two straight lines of books. Now there's entire diagrams of looping connections between books available on a Google search and Reddit.

Is he going to be publishing the final book in the second formic war trilogy or is this the last Enderverse story we are getting. I’ve gotten through three chapters and I’m already sad it’s the last

Hey guys and gals, reaching out to you today as I have started the publication of a new series on my YouTube channel, Brockshield, where I will be reading the plethora of Enderverse books and my first video released today with each new video release every Thursday at 5pm EST. I will be reading the series in order and here is the link to my first video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOwLR7ipi9U. I would be grateful if you could please like, comment, and subscribe as it would greatly help my channel. From one Enderverse lover to another. Thanks again for your time and support!

In Xenocide, Quim has a theological debate with a tree. The whole thing is glossed over in one paragraph. Does anyone else wonder what they discussed?

I’m 32, a mom, and new to Reddit, mostly creeping hobbies and stuff, but OSC books was my obsession in my late teens and early twenties. It’s pretty cool reading y’all’s conversations and feeling like I’ve found my people at last. Lol! I own and have read every OSC book from “Listen, Mom and Dad” up to Earth Awakens. (My budget and focus moved away from book buying when I got married and had a baby.) About 70+ books and comics and duplicates. They’re all favorites of mine. I used to write an OSC blog more than ten years ago too. I was truly obsessed. And it all started with Ender’s Game.