By Orson Scott Card.
Begun 06 Oct 2008; finished 09 Oct.
Review written c. Oct 2008.
All sorts of spoilers in this review, beware!
After reading three books, I’ve confirmed without a doubt that Orson Scott Card — or at least the Ender series — is un-put-down-able. Xenocide was a long book, an involved story, with numerous and detailed sub-plots each building to the same climax (and it was a climax long in the making), and stuffed full of ideology. It was compelling and absorbing, it forced me to confront its ideas, and I couldn’t stop reading it.
That’s what I said about Ender’s Game and Speaker For the Dead. Yes, Card writes wonderful books!
Plot-wise, Xenocide picked up right where Speaker For the Dead ended. The title is apt, because the planet of Lusitania and its inhabitants — the three species of humans, pequeninos and the Hive Queen — are facing annihilation by human forces. However, humans and the Hive Queen are also threatened with extinction by the descolada virus, which is an essential part of the pequenino life cycle. As all three species fight to survive, overcome, evade and/or avert these twin xenocidal threats, their fate in part depends on the decisions and communications of Jane the A.I. and three people on the entirely separate world of Path.