“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 that 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.
The task of discovering how the ships were made to disappear falls to Gloriously Bright, the most brilliant analytical mind in a world of people bred to superintelligence. There is little doubt that she can solve the puzzle, but will she choose life or death for the three races that live on Lusitania?” (Orson Scott Card).
I appreciated Orson Scott Card’s Xenocide because it was a unique and relatively fast-paced story, but I would not describe it as Card’s best work. First, it was riddled with both grammatical errors and typos. Second, I was not fond of the new characters that Card introduced, (mainly those that dwelled upon Path). This is due to the fact that I quickly tired of reading about an individual who felt dirty all of the time, a need to purify herself by tracing wood grains. I also tired of their obnoxious, self-righteous, religious nature and the sense that they were better than everyone else because they were religious and spoke to the gods. I also tired of Wang-mu’s sense of inferiority. In sum, each character of Path was painful to read for their own reason(s).
Third, I felt as though several of the chapters and its sections lacked a point and purpose—they didn’t really add to the story. They merely drew it out with things like circular internal monologues. Finally, I was confused by some of the things I read. For example, why wasn’t Ender worried that the hive queen would find out about Ela’s secret plan to replace the descolada with a new strain if she more or less had the power to break into someone’s mind? Why was she incapable of finding out if Ender claims to be unable to block her ability?
