Leah's Reviews > Xenocide

This is the best science fiction novel I have ever read. Very unexpected too as it's the 3rd book in a series and the only 3.8/5 avg. Goodreads rating. Verryyyyyyyyy original! Verrrrrryyyyyy creative, philosophical, and debatable. This book really makes you think about things, ideas, humanity, right/wrong, religion, faith, love, connection...

My Quick Synopsis:
It's difficult explaining the story without giving a lot away because this book constantly mophs and changes and evolves but I will begin with questions from the beginning:
There are a new set of characters from the God Path and they are Chinese descendants that are very intelligent but rely heavily on the gods, and what the gods lead them to do. But what if they're not listening to the gods, what is affecting how they are so strange from humans and that they need rituals to purify themselves to make them clean again?
How was Jane made, where did she come from, how can they save her?
How is Jane connected to everything, is she like a god?
More in depth look at the piggies and how they make sense now.
Who is the hive queen and how is she connected to everything?
What is the descolada virus and what does it do to sentitent beings on Luisitana?
How do they prevent another xenocide?
How do they stop the Descolada virus? Where did it come from?

I feel like normally even the best of books has it's faults, however small they are but this book is an exception, I'm almost sure it actually has no faults. I can usually be quick to complain about multiple parts of stories, characters, things that don't line up, plot holes, etc. but I am speechless with Xenocide, it's just about perfect! lol It's very rare I find a book like this. I feel like by this third book Orson Scott Card has improved his writing ten fold and that's even with the first couple books being pretty great.

I admit this book is very philosophical and "talky" as Orson Scott Card says. Some may not like that but I loved it. This book isn't about "what happened", it's more about "what was discussed and decided upon." Orson Scott Card was going to write a whole book about philotes but instead he combined the ideas into the Ender series and made this Xenocide book like a whole series in itself.

Parts I enjoyed:
""Don't be embarrassed, Qing-jao. The wise are wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them."

(Piggy speaking with Hive Queen)





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Miro talking to his mother Novinha:
"But you don't love him. You don't know how to love people. You only know how to own them. And because people will never act just like you want them to, Mother, you'll always feel betrayed. And because eventually everybody dies you'll always feel cheated. But you're the cheat, Mother. You're the one who uses our love for you to try to control us."

Miro speaking with Valentine:
"Are you a believer?
Let's say I'm a suspecter. I suspect there may be someone who cares what happens to us. That's one step better than merely wishing. And one step below hoping."

Valentine thinking about Miro and Ouanda:
"Inner strength and outward respect. These are the people who hold a community together, who lead. Unlike the sheep and the wolves, they perform a better role than the script given them by their inner fears and desires. They act out the script of decency, of self-sacrifice, of public horror-of civilization. And in he pretense, it becomes reality. There really is civilization in human history, thought Valentine, but only because of people like these. The shepherds.

Miro lashing out and Ender explaining to him:
"I think that we are free, and I don't think it's just an illusion that we believe in because it has survival value. And I think we're free because we aren't just this body, acting out a genetic script. And we aren't some soul that God created out of nothing. We're free because we always ex isted. Right back from the beginning of time, only there was no beginning of time so we existed all along. Nothing ever caused us. Nothing ever made us. We simply are, and we always were.
Philotes? asked Miro
Maybe, said Ender"

Ender explaining Gods to Wang-Mu:
"No matter how smart or strong you are, there's always somebody smarter or stronger, and when you run into somebody stronger and smarter than and you think, This is a god. This is perfection. But I can promise you that there's somebody else somewhere else who'll make your god look like a maggot by comparison. And somebody smarter or stronger or better is some way. So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down. For Congress to genetically alter people to make them smarter and more creative, that would have been a godlike, generous gift. But they were scared, so they hobbled the people of Path. They wanted to stay in control. A real god doesn't care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them.

Ender talking with Jane:
"You can't have it both ways, said Wiggin. Either somebody had a purpose for you or you were an accident. That's what an accident is-somethig that happened without anyone purposing it. So are you going to be resentful either way? The people of the Path are going to resent Congress like crazy, once they all find out what's been done to them. Are you going to be resentful because nobody did anything to you?
I can if I want, said Jane, bit it was a mockery of childish spite.
I'll tell you what I think, said Wiggin. I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself."

Hive Queen speaking to the piggy
"Earthborn animals do this thing inside their brains-a sort of mad firing-off of synapses, controlled insanity. While they're asleep. The part of their brain that records sight or sound, it's firing off every hour or two while they sleep; even when all the sights and sounds are complete random nonsense, their brains just keep on trying to assemble it into something sensible. They try to make stories out of it, it's complete random nonsense with no possible correlation to the real world, and yet they turn it into these crazy stories. And then they forget them. All that work, coming up with these stories, and when they wake up they forget almost all of them. But when they do remember, then they try to make stories of those crazy stories, trying to fit them into their real lives.