Category Archives: Orson Scott Card

Ender’s Game movie review

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Just so there is no confusion, this review will be ignoring all the controversy about author Orson Scott Card’s beliefs. The review will look at Ender’s Game as a movie and as an adaptation of the popular book. In both views, the movie falls short. It fails as a movie and does not do a particularly good job in adapting the book. Let’s see where the problems lie. WARNING: Spoilers ahoy.

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Laddertop by Emily Janice Card and Orson Scot Card

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If you haven’t guessed by their last names, then you should know that Emily Janice Card  is indeed Orson Scott Card’s last name (and follows in the family footsteps of using all three names). This is (I believe) the first time that Card has co-written a book with a family member and it’s not completely clear how much each of the writers did. The book, Laddertop, appears to be a pastiche of Ender’s Game and manga with talented children being taken to an space station and alien technology being used. The book is just volume 1, so there isn’t a lot of story and more questions than answers. Let’s check it out.

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Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card

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I really should stop reading Orson Scott Cards continuing Ender Saga. After the first couple books, it seems more and more like he’s reading his notes and writing stories about what happened in the margins of other books. The latest, Shadows in Flight, shows what happens after the Shadows series of books ended with Bean and his three little legumes that had Anton’s Key (the gene change that makes them smart, but unable to stop growing) turned on. This felt more like a “Where Are They Now?” segment than a continuation of the story. So let’s see what happened.

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The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card

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Orson Scott Card has pretty much made his career writing about amazing kids in space, in America, in Europe and in the future. So, it’s absolutely no surprise that his newest book, The Lost Gate, is about an amazing kid from a family of gods. Card has written magic before in his Seventh Son series, but this is more of mythology based than that series. It is fairly reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, but with a slightly different focus. So, let’s go find that gate.

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Ultimate Iron Man (part 1) by Orson Scott Card

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I was listening to the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy interview with Orson Scott Card* last week and they started talking about Card’s dabbling into comics. Until then, I had forgotten about his Ultimate Iron Man series. I had read it when it came out and I remembered that I wasn’t thrilled with it. But I decided to dust off the series and try it again. The first thing I realized was that I had only read Volume 1 and a second Volume had come out a year or so later. After re-reading Volume 1, I decided that I wasn’t interested enough to continue on to Volume 2 (if it gets better, let me know and I might try it). So what was the problem.

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Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card

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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?

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Maps in a Mirror by Orson Scott Card

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Maps in a Mirror is a collection of previously published short stories by Orson Scott Card. While Card is mainly known for his Ender Wiggin series of books, he was a prolific short story writer before moving to novels. These stories cover science fiction, horror and even philosophy. And with 46 stories (and close to 700 pages) there’s a story in there for everyone.

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Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card

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Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card was the first in a new series of novels in the Ender’s Game universe. The original short story turned book had made a hero out of a small boy who was a better tactical leader then anyone before him. The story then followed Ender as he spread out through the universe and did good deeds and wrote books and I lost interest somewhere in the 3rd book. Card then decided to write more about Ender’s time in Battle School, so he picked a character that was familiar to Ender fans, but hadn’t been developed much, Bean. So Ender’s Shadow follows Bean from his early days until the events at the end of the original Ender’s Game. Card sets Bean up as smarter and better than Ender, but without Ender’s leadership charisma. So how does the book fit into the Ender Universe? NOTE: Spoilers within

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