This book was just as good as the first one, if not better. The world is greatly expanded in this one and the story progresses in an unpredictable, but wonderful way. I really enjoy where the action is going and the way the world is coming together. I really hope that some of the big questions in the world will be answered at the end of the last book, but I fully expect there to be a huge lingering question at the end of the series with just a small part of the curtain pulled back. I don’t expect all the answers, but a few of them would be nice. I expect no big resolution.
This is one of the best stories and best written books I’ve ever read. One of the ways I can tell how much I like the book is how much I’m willing to do other stuff while listening. With this book there was very little I was able to do while listening, since I was so taken in by the world that was being built and the story that was being told. I can’t wait for the last book to come out so that I can finish the series.
I had dinner with Steph’s family for Chinese new year, and then we got them to play a few of the games we had been making. They liked the format of the Lizard Wizards, and we got to play a good number of rounds of Bot A Boom. Steph and I made some Tom Yom to share, and had a little left over this time. The rest of the food there was tasty, and since there was so much of it I took a good bit home.
We played the expansion of Tzolk’in and I rather liked it. The tribes gave a very clear starting strategy and the intermediate goals gave something very solid to aim for in the middle of the game. We didn’t have enough for the quick action spots to matter, but we did get two games in. The first game was Iliya, Adam, and myself. I won with 104, using the fat tribe, which starts with 5 people but requires extra food. The second game was just Adam and myself, and he got 100 points with me at 50 points, despite 2 monuments.
This was a very interesting collection of short stories. The meeting of Ender’s parents was quite good. I liked the parity that my life has to it. The version of Ender’s game in this was much less mature and didn’t have some of the really psychological parts to it. The meeting of Ender and Jane was also a good story. I liked the part about the tax collector, and how Ender’s holdings just wouldn’t stop scrolling. This wasn’t the best of the Ender series, but it also wasn’t the worst.
This had a lot of good points but it was basically how to win friends and influence people in mass. It is good for those who haven’t read other books along these lines, but I’d focus on the other ones first.
This was a cute short story about a fundamentalist Christian at battle school in the Ender universe. He gets picked on and then is brought out of his shell by Ender. The story was cute, but not anything special.
I’d say this is one of the weaker books in the series, as there wasn’t much focus on anything. There was the conflict of mother-daughter, the conflict of admiral-Ender, and the conflict of Ender-Achilles. The book lacked a coherent center, and even the world building that it did, didn’t have a good center about which it focused. I still enjoyed it for what it is, but look forward to the meeting of the shadow and Ender series, despite the main character of both being dead.
This book had a lot of good information, but most of it I had heard before in the other books I’ve been listening to. I agree with many of the premises put forward, especially that the leadership style will have be responsive to the situation. I need to work on a basic leadership style laid out in this lecture series, but I’m not too far behind in understanding it. I’m just far behind in implementation.
It's an Exciting World 