Over 30 years ago, Orson Scott Card wrote a wonderful short story called Ender’s Game. The story won numerous awards and was much beloved. Almost a decade later, while working on a new novel, Card realized that the protagonist from the short story (Ender Wiggins) would be the perfect lead character for this novel. But, for this new novel to work, he needed to expand the short story. So Ender’s Game was expanded to be a novel, so that Card could then write Speaker for the Dead. The two books won Hugo and Nebula awards in consecutive years and were widely loved. Card then wrote about 600 (approximately) more novels in the series with new characters, old characters, and filling in time gaps. As expected, the general quality of these books have gone down the further along Card went. Ender in Exile is the latest of these books and starts a new series to cover the time between Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead. So, what is new about this series?

When we last left Ender Wiggin, he had just won the war and destroyed the enemy race…except for one unborn Queen who he will bring from planet to planet to find a new home. He had also written two stories, one about the Formics and one about his brother. These had made him into a mythical person and fed into the second book. This story starts back at the end of the war and goes into more detail about why Ender can no longer go back to Earth. The main portion of this book deals with Ender taking on the governorship of a new colony, the first human colony which takes over an old formic planet. Ender gets into a power struggle with the spaceship captain (who believes he can outrank a young boy and become governor instead). Ender, of course, uses his talents and charms to win over the colonists and wins the battle for governorship.

The book also deals with Ender finding the Hive Queen, starting the Hive Queen books and then brings in a sub story that carries over from the Bean series of books. The book moves quickly and is well written. But overall it’s a disappointing follow up to the Ender series of books. The tie in to the Bean books are poorly thought out and clichéd. The Hive Queen and book writing are adding nothing new beyond what was shown in the end of the original novel. Overall, if you are a huge Ender fan, then read this, otherwise it’s not really recommended.