[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 26 KB, 312x475, EndersShadow.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3917789 No.3917789 [Reply] [Original]

Why is Ender's Shadow so painful to read?

"Look at me I'm so intellectual you think you're so clever singling me out for being small there can't possibly be a deeper reason behind it"
"The nice nun is holding some things back so she's a bitch"
"I'm going to refuse to allow them to psychoanalyze me even though they need to do it to understand who can be commander, because muh hostility to everyone"
"What is love and why are people compassionate, that's stupid why is Ender stupid"
"muh achilles"

Geez, Ender may have been an overly perfect messiah character but at least he wasn't an awful douchebag that the reader couldn't connect to and read without cringing.

>> No.3917798

At least it's still better than the pseudo-intellectual bullshit that pervaded the Speaker for the Dead line. Or Novinha and her terrible family.

>> No.3917834

OSC is a hack. Ender's Game is babby's first sci-fi tier.

>> No.3917857

>>3917834
/thread

>> No.3917865

>>3917834
Yeah. Good books to read, but it took me one day to read Ender's Game, and the story is a bit lacking. Heinlein is best sci-fi

>> No.3917904
File: 37 KB, 524x468, 1359394535198.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3917904

>>3917798


Oh my GOD, Novinha is the single most unlikeable thing in the entire series, or in fact any series ever.

>> No.3917998

>>3917904
She was pretty human.

>> No.3918013

Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide were decent books but the ending of Xenocide was the steamiest pile of shit my eyes have ever graced.

>> No.3918107

>>3917789
>"The nice nun is holding some things back so she's a bitch"
"turns out she was withholding vital information about my life-expectancy and genetics"
>"I'm going to refuse to allow them to psychoanalyze me even though they need to do it to understand who can be commander, because muh hostility to everyone"
"good thing too, because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do so many other important things because I would have had no leverage over the teachers."
>"muh achilles"
steals my frozen embryos, plants them in surrogates to hide them from me, and tries to kill me and Petra repeatedly

>> No.3918120

>>3918013
Did you read Children of the Mind? Because it makes Xenocide look like Pulitzer material

>> No.3918124

Children of the Mind makes Battlefield Earth look like a Pulitzer prize winner.

>> No.3918146

I've read all of Card's books in this continuity and thoroughly enjoyed them. Would read again.

>> No.3918150

>>3917798
I feel like I'm the only one on /lit/ that loved the Ender Quartet. It was so intense to me.

I cannot for the life of me remember his name but the dude that jumped the fence was one of the most sympathetic characters I've ever seen.

>> No.3918165

>>3918150
He jumped the fence because he was freaking out and running away and somehow forgot that human and alien physiology probably didn't work the same way. So contrived.

>> No.3918166

>>3918107
>"turns out she was withholding vital information about my life-expectancy and genetics"
She didn't quite know anything for sure at that point, though. she didn't really have anything to tell him beyond "I'm looking into it", and why tell him that?

>> No.3918172

>>3918165
His actions seemed plenty plausible. I'm not trying to defend the many questionable aspects to Card's writing/ideas; I know he is pulpy garbage at times, I just found those books to be highly enjoyable and personally I loved that character in particular.

Ah well, different strokes for different folks.

>> No.3918184

>>3918150
For me Speaker for the Dead was a decent book and made thematic sense, but then Xenocide and Children of the Mind came along with the OCD chinese girl washing her hands and certain members of Novinha's family intent on stirring up trouble just because the plot says they have to (yada yada humans are emotional and illogical) while Novinha herself apparently forgot anything she learned in Speaker for the Dead. Didn't help that the end of Xenocide and the start of Children couldn't agree with each other on certain facts.

Not that they didn't have their moments, for example the description reappearance of the buggers in response to the riots against the forest gave me the shivers. But many of the characters and their actions were painful to read. I guess they needed to balance Jesus characters like Ender and Valentine with some nasty fucktards like that bitch who insisted they could sign a peace treaty with a virus or the guy who started a riot against an unrelated forest because his brother was murdered.

>> No.3918197

>>3918107
>"good thing too, because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do so many other important things because I would have had no leverage over the teachers."
What did it really achieve, in the end? So what if they didn't manage to get a read on what kind of person he is. I don't think that would have significantly affected his ability to run around in the ducts or break into student dossiers or the other stuff he did.

>> No.3918373

>>3917998
The worst kind of human, the least likable kind. And some of her children were just as bad.

>> No.3919155

>>3918197
the only reason they let him keep the teacher account with full was because he didn't play the mind game, so they needed to fid out as much about him as possible through a different sort of game.

>> No.3919381

>>3918184
Oh my GOD Children of the Mind was fucking unbelievably terrible. That utterly contrived ending, that Samoan planet, the romance of Wang-mu and Peter, the romance of Valentine and Miro, all that terrible writing...I loved Speaker for the Dead, maybe even more than Ender's Game. I even enjoyed Xenocide until the end. But Children of the Mind was a fucking abortion. So much wasted potential.

>> No.3919407
File: 74 KB, 634x491, locke_and_demosthenes.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3919407

>> No.3920089

Shadow of the Hegemon is a bit better if only because Bean got his head a little bit further out of his ass.

>> No.3920137

I really hate it when people judge a book based on the personality of the main character. It simply makes no sense.
>hurr durr I cannot connect to it

>> No.3920685

>>3920137
When what the book is about is the achievements and actions of the main character in the background of another series, that had better be a compelling character.

>> No.3921270

>>3920685
Compelling, yes, but that's something totally different.

>> No.3921742

>>3920089
Ender's Shadow series is best when it's about the maneuvering between nations and between Achilles and Peter's faction than when it's about how Petra wants Bean's babies.

>> No.3922987

>>3921742
I like how Peter who up to that point we thought was this amazing genius who united the world as Hegemon was retconned into an incompetent who had to be dragged around by his parents and do what super speshul Bean told him.